ALGOL 60

ALGOrithmic Language

In an era dominated by IBM computers and FORTRAN programming, ALGOL 60 offered a portable alternative. It was small and elegant, the first language to be described in BNF. It was block-structured ("begin...end"), nested, and recursive. ALGOL 60 defined several lexical representations: the reference language which was the defining language, the publication language which permitted a more natural notation such as superscripts, exponents and Greek letters, and hardware representations to allow for computer systems with limited character sets.

"Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60", Peter Naur ed, CACM 3(5):299-314 (May 1960).