ALCOR

For the cryonics organization, seeAlcor Life Extension Foundation.For radar tracking station, seeRoi-Namur.

ALCOR(ALGOL Converter,acronym) is an early computer language definition created by theALCOR Group,a consortium of universities, research institutions and manufacturers in Europe and the United States which was founded in 1959 and which had 60 members in 1966. The group had the aim of a commoncompilerspecification for a subset ofALGOL 60after the ALGOL meeting in Copenhagen in 1958.

In addition to its programming application, as the name Algol is also an astronomical reference, to the starAlgol,so too, Alcor is a reference to the starAlcor.This star is the fainter companion of the 2ndmagnitudestarZeta Ursae Majoris.This was sometimes ironized as being a badomenfor the future of the language.

In Europe, a high level machine architecture forALGOL 60was devised which was emulated on various real computers, among them theSiemens 2002and theIBM 7090.An ALGOL manual was published which provided a detailed introduction of all features of the language with many program snippets, and four appendixes:

1. Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60
2. Report on Subset ALGOL 60 (IFIP)
3. Report on Input-Output Procedures for ALGOL 60
4. An early "standard" character set for representing ALGOL 60 code on paper and paper tape. This character set introduced the characters "×", ";", "[", "]", and "⏨" into theCCITT-2code, the first two replacing "?" and theBEL control character,the others taking unused code points.

References

• Baumann, R. (1961) Baumann, R. "ALGOL Manual of the ALCOR Group, Pts. 1, 2 & 3" Elektronische Rechenanlagen No. 5 (Oct. 1961), 206–212; No. 6 (Dec. 1961), 259–265; No. 2 (Apr. 1962); (in German)
• Papertape, punched card, magnetic tape coding schemesComputer Museum, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

External links

• ALCOR in The Encyclopedia of Computer Languages
• The ALCOR Project,Klaus Samelson,Friedrich L. Bauer,1962.