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Influence

Page history last edited by PBworks 18 years ago

Influence

 

There were two design influences on the development of the Titan Autocode language 1. Its primary use was as an Autocode for a newly built machine called the Titan Machine. Primary Application Domains. Its secondary usage was in the domain of numerical calculations and engineering-based solutions.

 

Influence on Titan Autocode

The main influence behind the existence of Titan Autocode is development of various projects at the Cambridge Laboratory during the 1960s. When the Cambridge Laboratory was set up, its intended purpose was to do symbolic processing 1. All programs were going to be written in a language called CPL (Cambridge Programming Language, later renamed Combined Programming Language). However, this language took longer to develop than was anticipated and Titan Autocode was used as an interim solution 1. The language was heavily based on the EDSAC 2 Autocode 2. EDSAC 2 was the predecessor to the Titan Machine and the similarities between their Autocodes fulfilled the need for easy transfer of code from one Machine to the other. Their similarities extend to their compilers as the compiler developed for Titan Autocode by Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, was again heavily based on the compiler for EDSAC 2. In fact, its initial version was an exact copy of the EDSAC 2 complier 1.

 

What it influenced

A project which was influenced by Titan Autocode was the development of the Cambridge Algebra System. Astronomers David Barton and Steve Bourne together with an MSc student called Chris Burgess working at the Cambridge Laboratory developed a compiler for the Algebra system using Titan Autocode 1. This system was built in various stages and the use of Titan Autocode was part of the final redesign 3. The system introduced a language that was based on Titan Autocode, using algebraic expressions in the place of floating point. This system was the only thing that kept Titan Autocode alive and its was eventually rewritten in BCPL, which was a language that was developed to write the compiler for CPL, but which has extended its lifetime.


 

1 Prof. Fitch at the University of Bath

2 Cambridge University web site: www.cl.cam.ac.uk

3 The Design of the Cambridge Algebra System, S.R. Bourne and J.R. Hourne, 1971.

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