Development of systems software for the Ferut computer at the University of Toronto, 1952 to 1955

The Ferut computer was a copy of the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester. Two years after its delivery in Toronto, systems software had been developed to vastly enlarge the community of users. To go from a few dedicated programmers patient enough to deal with the extremely difficult machine code to a situation where anyone with two hours to spare could program successfully was a major advance. This article retraces the steps in this pioneering experiment in automatic programming, in which the author played a central role.<
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