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C00002 00002		In my opinion, Algol 60 was greatly affected by an inexplicit
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	In my opinion, Algol 60 was greatly affected by an inexplicit
change in purpose by the members of WG2.1 that occurred mainly
between Algol 58 and Algol 60.  Namely, the original purpose of
the Algol Committee and the justification for its appointment by
the European and American computer societies was to produce a
new standard language for numerical computation.  The purpose was
not to develop computer science per se but rather to use what was
known to produce a new language that would be convenient for
describing algorithms in publications and for compilers.

	However, this changed.  Algol 60 became a vehicle for research
in computer languages by the members of the committee and others.
Ideas were proposed and adopted whose implementability and utility
was conjectural. Consequently, Algol became the focus of much
research in computer science at the price of losing the possibility
of displacing Fortran as the language for describing numerical
computations.

	This change was unfortunate.  Languages as vehicles for
research were needed but there was no need for international
standardization.  On the other hand, the failure to displace
Fortran meant that many of the defects of Fortran still plague us,
and there is less standardization than would have been desirable.

	In the Algol 60 Committee the most committed conservative
was Bauer, and the most radical was Perlis.  However, the concept
of Algol as primarily a research vehicle did not become explicit
until much later.