IFIP Working Group 2.1

Soon after the publication of the original ALGOL 60 Report in 1960, issues arose that needed some form of authoritative resolution. ALGOL 60 had been chosen by leading scientific journal Communications of the ACM as its language for algorithms, then an important part of the items published in the Communications. Computer manufacturers and academic groups were laboring to produce implementations. There were issues that needed clarification, such as ambiguities and errors in the Report. Another urgent issue was the absence of even basic input/output (I/O) facilities.

The authors of the ALGOL 60 Report met in Rome, Italy, in April 1962 to resolve most of the ambiguities and errors known at the time, resulting in the Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60. During that meeting, the authors decided to institutionalize the responsibility for the continued support and maintenance of ALGOL 60 by transferring it to the young international IFIP organization.

To this end, IFIP established a working group under its Technical Committee 2 on Programming. The initial membership consisted largely of most of the original authors, with the addition of several members responsible for ALGOL 60 implementations. IFIP WG 2.1 held its first meeting in August 1962 in Munich, Germany.

When ALGOL 60 was designed, its intended scope of use was similar to that of FORTRAN: largely the field of numerical analysis or computing. IFIP WG 2.1 embarked on the design of a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, code-named ALGOL X, with a much wider application scope, including nonnumerical programming, areas better served by languages like COBOL and Lisp than by ALGOL 60. Among several competing initial designs, including a proposal by Niklaus Wirth that eventually led to ALGOL W, the Working Group chose that by Aad van Wijngaarden, ultimately leading to ALGOL 68.

IFIP WG 2.1 decided to adopt the design in December 1968 during a stormy meeting, once again held in Munich. However, there was considerable opposition among the members, led by Edsger Dijkstra, expressed in a Minority Report. This led to a split in the group and the formation of a new working group, IFIP Working Group 2.3 on Programming Methodology.[3]