In the early 1960s ALGOL was expected to become a universal programming language for scientific computation, equally suitable for publication of algorithms and for allowing their automatic execution on every computer. ALGOL represented a radical shift in the way computer programming was understood up to that point, establishing the basis of our current understanding of programming. However, the various versions of the language failed to reach widespread implementation and the project crumbled in the late 1960s. Making extensive use of archival sources, this paper seeks to explore the reasons behind such contradictory outcome and in addition review the popular portrayal of ALGOL as an idealistic approach to programming, victim of IBM’s vested interests on its FORTRAN language. In particular, we aim to show how the various international and national organizations that lent their support to the ALGOL project proved unable to agree on ways of reconciling the open character of the language as a scientific object with the need to deliver a stable, marketable product.

This tension became particularly evident in the complex relationship of IBM to ALGOL. In 1958 the first version of the language –product of collaboration between scientists from both sides of the Atlantic- received the support from several organizations in Europe and the US, including IBM’s users group SHARE. Initial attempts to implement the language, however, revealed the existence of ambiguities in language definition and the complexity of getting an ALGOL processor to work. In 1960 the second definition of the language introduced so many new features that it was perceived by many as an entirely new language. As a result, IBM and SHARE decided to cool down their support for the project until it was agreed on an international body to act as official arbiter on ALGOL. In the next years the project moved within the newly established IFIPS, but preference for knowledge generation remained a priority. Eventually, this epistemic aspect of the language became a difficult hurdle to overcome in trying to find a compromise with IBM, which was also facing the appearance of COBOL, a business language sponsored by the US government. Still, ALGOL proved to be a crucial step in the rise of computer science as discipline, as aspects like its machine-independent character, the ambiguities in language definition, or the challenge of developing processors became soon productive venues of research.