Algol in France: From Universal Project to Embedded Culture (original) (raw)
From universal project to sunken culture : Algol in France
2011
Algol was a high-level programming language, defined by American and European mathematicians in the late 1950s. It provoked a wave of debates, projects and counter-projects, and remained lively in academic spheres until the 1970s. This paper focuses on Algol, less as a programming language than as a research program, as an object of circulation and translation, as a decisive step in the building of a new scientific community : computer science or informatique. It gives an analysis of the main French actors involved in the global Algol endeavour – small groups of computer scientists who became interested in this project, appropriated it and participated in its evolution, either within academic laboratories, R & D departments of computer companies, users or learned societies. This means grasping each group with its local, particular logic, culture and environment, in order to better understand the overall dynamic and allow comparisons at European or global scale.
Logic and Computing in France : A Late Convergence
L. De Mol, G. Primiero (eds.), AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 - History and Philosophy of Programming, 2012
[NB: Please consult my updated paper, "Logic, Formal Linguistics and Computing in France: From non-reception to progressive convergence", published here on the same webpage and in HaPoC3 conf. proceedings] Logic and Computing in France: A Late Convergence Pierre Mounier-Kuhn Keywords: Mathematical logic, computer science, discipline building, France, Institut Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing How did mathematical logic interact with computing ? Was the “Turing machine”, to sum up a common model, a decisive source of inspiration for electronic computers pioneers ? Based on archival research and oral history interviews, a detailed investigation on the case of France – a mid-size country where computers appeared years later than in Britain and in the USA – reveals rather a late encounter than a filiation process 1. Of course we must distinguish between several branches of mathematical logic. Boolean algebra was taught and used as soon as the first digital calculators were developed in French companies and laboratories, in 1950. It went differently with the theories of computability and recursive functions which had “revolutionized” mathematical logic in the 1930s, but were ignored in France until the mid-1950s. Indeed logic had been eclipsed from the French mathematical scene since Jacques Herbrand’s premature death in 1931. Moreover, it was banned from mathematics by the Bourbaki group, for reasons which will be explained in the paper, and rejected toward philosophy. In the “desert of French logic”, to quote a contemporary, only a couple, Jean-Louis Destouches and Paulette Février, worked on the logical foundations of physics. Février also published translations of foreign logicians and organized a series of international conferences. Mathematical logic reappeared in 1955, when Bourbakist Henri Cartan invited the Austrian- American Georg Kreisel to teach in Paris. Simultaneously, three French doctoral students – two mathematicians, Daniel Lacombe and Jean Porte, and a philosopher, Louis Nolin – dared to embrace this marginal matter. Yet it remained quite remote from the technical trivialities of computing: Computer experts were struggling with vacuum tube circuit and magnetic drum problems, or focused on developing numerical analysis, so that computability theories made little sense to them. Things changed in the early 1960s, when a series of events manifested a convergence between logic and the nascent computer science. In October 1961, IBM’s European education center at Blaricum (Netherlands) hosted a meeting on the Relationship Between Non-numerical Programming and the Theory of Formal Systems 2. Several French computer scientists and logicians (including the co-organizer of the meeting, Paul Braffort) participated. Among the speakers, they heard Noam Chomsky and Marcel-Paul Schützenberger lecture on “The algebraic theory of context-free languages”, and John McCarthy present his vigorous manifesto, “A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation”, which proclaimed the foundation of a new science of computation, based on numerical analysis, recursive function theory and automata theory. In June 1962, a mathematics conference hold at the science faculty of Clermont-Ferrand included sessions on computing and on logic, the latter being represented by a constellation of international stars – Tarski, Beth, Bernays, Rabin, etc. In his keynote address, De Possel, the head of the Paris computing institute (Institut Blaise Pascal), explained that mathematical logic, hitherto a field of pure speculation, had become useful to mathematics in general and to information processing in particular. At the second IFIP congress (Munich, August 1962), a session was devoted to “Progress in the logical foundations of information processing”. John McCarthy hammered again the gospel he was preaching at Blaricum a year before, and an engineer from Siemens, Heinz Gumin, explained why computer designers needed mathematical logic. Among the French delegation (nearly 10% of the audience), at least a few listeners got the message. Actually the message was already being spread in the French computing community throughits learned society AFCAL. In late 1961 at the AFCAL seminar on symbolic languages, Louis Nolin, who had attended the Blaricum meeting, gave a programmatic lecture. He recommanded to design computer languages according to the axiomatic method established in mathematics – Algol being exemplary of this approach. In order to build an algorithm, it was useful to determine first if the function was effectively computable. For this, computer scientists would be well advised to learn about the solutions elaborated 30 years ago by logicians. Louis Nolin was De Possel’s assistant and chief programmer at Institut Blaise Pascal, thus he was in a good position to translate words into action. In the autumn of 1962, regular courses on the theories of computability and recursive functions were introduced in the computer science curriculum in Paris at graduate level. Meanwhile, Paulette Février published a translation of A. Grzegorczyk’s classic treaty on recursive functions, and created within the Institut Blaise Pascal a collection of brochures explicitely titled “Logic for the calculator’s use”: Reprints of journal articles, seminar and course texts, doctoral dissertation in logic, were thus made available beyond the tiny circle of French logicians. From 1963, logic was firmly established in the computer science curriculum at the University of Paris. Three years later, the Ministry of National Education defined a new, nationwide masters diploma, Maîtrise d’informatique, including a certificate of “Algebra, mathematical logic, compiler and system theory”. Other universities followed progressively. Grenoble was practically in phase with Paris, although at a smaller scale, as logic was taught by an astronomer turned linguist, Bernard Vauquois, who headed a laboratory for automatic translation and was an early member of the Algol committee. Later came Nancy, Clermont and other faculties. Boosted by this interaction with an expanding new discipline, mathematical logic flourished again in French universities at the end of the decade. Reciprocally, the alliance between logicians and computer practitioners was a decisive factor in the assertion of computing as a new science. Was the case of France exceptional, or representative of a general process ? This question will be addressed in conclusion. NB: Please take a look at a more elaborate and recent version of this research, "Logic, Formal Linguistics and Computing in France: From non-reception to progressive convergence" (2017) 1 This research stems out of questions addressed in my book, L’Informatique en France, de la seconde guerre mondiale au Plan Calcul. L’émergence d’une science, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010. 2 The proceedings were published two years later with an even more explicit title: P. Braffort & D. Hirschberg (eds.), Computer Programming and Formal Systems, Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1963.
AFCAL and the Emergence of Computer Science in France: 1957–1967
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
Founded in 1957, the Association Française de Calcul (AF-CAL) was the first French society dedicated mainly to numerical computation. Its rapid growth and amalgamation with sister societies in related fields (Operations Research, Automatic Control) in the 1960s resulted in changes of its name and purpose, including the invention and adoption of the term informatique in 1962-1964, then of the adoption of cybernétique in 1967. Our paper aims at explicating the motives of its creation, its evolving definition and the functions it fulfilled. We seek to understand how this association, altogether a learned and a professional society, contributed to the emergence and recognition of Computing as an academic discipline in France. The main sources are the scattered surviving records of AFCAL, conserved in the archives of the Observatoire de Paris, of the
From Babbage to Babel and beyond: A brief history of programming languages
Computer Languages, 1992
Al~tract--The history of computer programming languages is reviewed, with emphasis on the influences of early languages on later efforts. Four generations of software are presented, beginning with machine code, and continuing through fourth generation languages, paradigms, and environments.
Special Issue: 100 Years of Alan Turing and 20 Years of SLAIS Guest Editors
Informatica is a journal primarily covering intelligent systems in the European computer science, informatics and cognitive community; scientific and educational as well as technical, commercial and industrial. Its basic aim is to enhance communications between different European structures on the basis of equal rights and international refereeing. It publishes scientific papers accepted by at least two referees outside the author's country. In addition, it contains information about conferences, opinions, critical examinations of existing publications and news. Finally, major practical achievements and innovations in the computer and information industry are presented through commercial publications as well as through independent evaluations. Editing and refereeing are distributed. Each editor from the Editorial Board can conduct the refereeing process by appointing two new referees or referees from the Board of Referees or Editorial Board. Referees should not be from the author's country. If new referees are appointed, their names will appear in the list of referees. Each paper bears the name of the editor who appointed the referees. Each editor can propose new members for the Editorial Board or referees. Editors and referees inactive for a longer period can be automatically replaced. Changes in the Editorial Board are confirmed by the Executive Editors. The coordination necessary is made through the Executive Editors who examine the reviews, sort the accepted articles and maintain appropriate international distribution. The Executive Board is appointed by the Society Informatika. Informatica is partially supported by the Slovenian Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. Each author is guaranteed to receive the reviews of his article. When accepted, publication in Informatica is guaranteed in less than one year after the Executive Editors receive the corrected version of the article.
C'est avec grand plaisir que je vous accueille pour les Sixièmes Journées Nationales du GDR Génie de la Programmation et du Logiciel (GPL) au Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers de Paris. Ces journées sont l'occasion de rassembler la communauté du GDR GPL. Les missions principales du GDR GPL sont l'animation scientifique de la communauté et la promotion de nos disciplines, notamment en direction des jeunes chercheurs. Cette animation scientifique est d'abord le fruit des efforts de nos groupes de travail, actions transverses et de l'Ecole des Jeunes Chercheurs en Programmation. Le GDR GPL est maintenant dans sa septième année d'activité. Les journées nationales sont un temps fort de l'activité de notre GDR, l'occasion pour toute la communauté d'échanger et de s'enrichir des derniers travaux présentés. Plusieurs événements scientifiques sont co-localisés avec ces journées nationales : la 8ième édiction de la conférence francophone sur les architectures logicielles CAL 2014, la 3ième édition de la conférence en IngénieErie Logicielle CIEL 2014, ainsi que 13ème édition d'AFADL 2014, atelier francophone sur les Approches Formelles dans l'Assistance au Développement de Logiciels. Ces journées sont une vitrine où chaque groupe de travail ou action transverse donne un aperçu de ses recherches. Une trentaine de présentations ont ainsi été sélectionnées par les responsables des groupes de travail. Comme les années précédentes, nous avons demandé aux groupes de travail de nous proposer, en règle générale, des présentations qui avaient déjà fait l'objet d'une sélection dans une conférence nationale ou internationale ; ceci nous garantit la qualité du programme. Trois conférenciers invités nous ont fait l'honneur d'accepter notre invitation.
The pioneer days of scientific computing in Switzerland
1990
In this period, Stiefel's team also solved a large number of real-world computational problems on another computer, Zuse's 24, rented by the institute. Along with this work went major contributions to numerical analysis by Rutishauser and Stiefel, and Rutishauser's seminal work on compiling programs, which was later followed by his strong commitment in ALGOL. We have tried to include some background information and to complement H.R. Schwarz's article [Scw81] on the same subject.
How did the theory and practice of computing interact to generate a new discipline, computer science? Studying the French scene in comparison to other countries, reveals that in most cases computing developed initially as an ancillary technique of applied mathematics, with little awareness of the path-breaking theories of computability elaborated in the 1930s. This was particularly clear in France, where mathematical logic was almost inexistent and disregarded by the Bourbaki group. It was only in the early 1960s that researchers in the emerging field of computing felt the need for theoretical models, and discovered the Turing machine and recursive functions. Simultaneously, an interest for language theories and information structures, fostered by practical projects such as machine translation, converged with issues raised by software development and the nascent theory of automata. The convergence of these diverse intellectual agenda was central in the process of construction of the new discipline.
IEEE Annals of The History of Computing, 1990
This article describes a case of institutional innovation-the development of a new activity among established scientific disciplines. The official recognition of computer science in the French research and educational organizations met many obstacles, at least until the mid-1970s, although research and teaching had been carried on in this field for 20 years. In the CNRS, informatics emerged as a subdiscipline of applied mathematics and fluid mechanics, then of mathematics, before a specific assessment committee was created in 1976 for computer sciences and automation. In the university system, a subcommittee was established in 1972 and became a full committee in 1982; at that time, computer activities had already penetrated the secondary schools.