Exhibitions

COBOL

March 17, 2011 – February 11, 2013
Programmers at the Console of a UNIVAC I, with Unityper and Tape Drives, Gift of Grace Murray Hopper, women's history

National Museum of American History
1300 Constitution Ave., NW
Washington, DC

1st Floor, Constitution Ave. Entrance, Artifact Walls

See on Map Floor Plan

COBOL, or Common Business Orientated Language, was one of the first computer-programming languages to run successfully on different brands of computers; it was devised 50 years ago by a committee of programmers to combat the problem of each manufacturer using a different computer language. This display case features parts of two of the first computers—built by different manufacturers—to run COBOL, the actual printout from the first successful test of the language, and related documents.