Autocode

Alick E. Glennie, 1952

Autocoder was possibly the first primitive compiler. It translated symbolic statements into machine language for the Manchester Mark I computer. Autocoding came to be a generic term for symbolic assembly language programming, and versions of Autocode were developed for many machines: the Ferranti Atlas, Titan, Mercury and Pegasus, and the IBM 702, IBM 705 and IBM 1401. The Autocoders developed in the Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester for Mercury and Atlas showed, in rudimentary form, many of the features of modern high level languages.