From: John Maniotes <maniotes@calumet.purdue.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:37:35 -0600
Subject: GOTRAN ON THE IBM 1316 DISK STORAGE PACK  (Serial No. K7402)

Armando,

I am not familiar with the Newark College Fortran II load and go compilier.

Most academic institutions during the 1960s and 1970s used the WATFIV Fortran
load and go compiler from the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Purdue University Calumet used used the WATFIV on an IBM 370 computer for a
time.  We also used WATBOL, a COBOL load and go complier also from the Univ of
Waterloo on our 370.

The GOTRAN interpreter is a load and go subset of Fortran I.  GOTRAN had ONLY 12
statements and they were:

    IF      READ
    CONTINUE    PRINT
    DO      PUNCH
    PAUSE       PLOT    
    STOP        DIMENSION
    GO TO       Arithmetic assignment statement

GOTRAN was used by academic institutions during the 1960s and 1970s for a
variety of reasons.

We used it because it was an easy language for students to learn programming
compared to the existing lanuages at that time.

Other institutions used it because they did not have access to a time sharing
mini computer with the BASIC interpreter.

Still other used GOTRAN because you could process many SMALL student oriented
programs without going thru a time consuming compilation as with the 1620
Fortran system.

Anyway, GOTRAN  was a fun language for beginners to program.  Listed below are
some GOTRAN references that were available to our students at that time:

    (1) 1620 GOTRAN Interpretive Programming System, Reference Manual, C26-5594,
         IBM
    
    (2) Beginning Fortran, Simplified 12 - Statement Programming,   Maniotes,
J., Higley,          H. B., & Haag, J., N., Hayden Book Co., New York, 1971

    (3) Computer Programming and Related Mathematics,  Andree, R. V., John Wiley
&        Sons, New York, 1967.
    
The GOTRAN interpreter came either on paper tape or punched cards.  Later a disk
version came out which ran under the Monitor I OS.

Appendix B of reference (2) describes the operating procedure for: 

    (1) GOTRAN for a card oriented 1620 system
    (2) GOTAFIT for a disk oriented 1620 system

Appendix G of reference (2), contains 2 translator programs that were used to
convert GOTRAN source programs to either Fortran II or Fortran IV programs,
respectively.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

Sincerely,

John Maniotes
=========================================================

____________________Forward Header_____________________
Subject:    Re: IBM 1316 DISK STORAGE PACK  (Serial No. K7402) 
Author: Armando Stettner <aps@ieee.org>
Date:       1/23/99 11:35 PM

John,

How does that GOTRAN Interpreter (a load and go subset of FORTRAN I)
compare/relate, etc. to the FORTRAN II Load and Go compiler from, I
think, Newark College of Engineering (NCE)?

   armando.

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