Klerer–May System Explained

The Klerer–May System is a programming language developed in the mid-1960s, oriented to numerical scientific programming, whose most notable feature is its two-dimensional syntax based on traditional mathematical notation.

For input and output, the Klerer–May system used a Friden Flexowriter modified to allow half-line motions for subscripts and superscripts.^[1] The character set included digits, upper-case letters, subsets of 14 lower-case Latin letters and 18 Greek letters, arithmetic operators (+ − × / |) and punctuation (. , ( )), and eight special line-drawing characters (resembling ╲ ╱ ⎜ _ ⎨ ⎬ ˘ ⁔) used to construct multi-line brackets and symbols for summation, products, roots, and for multi-line division or fractions.^[2] The system was intended to be forgiving of input mistakes, and easy to learn; its reference manual was only two pages.^[3]

The system was developed by Melvin Klerer and Jack May at Columbia University's Hudson Laboratories in Dobbs Ferry, New York, for the Office of Naval Research, and ran on GE-200 series computers.

Further reading

• An Experiment in a User-oriented Computer System . Klerer, Melvin . May, Jack . Commun. ACM . May 1964 . 7 . 5 . 290–294 . 10.1145/364099.364266. 14606272 . free .
• Two-dimensional Programming . ACM . Klerer, Melvin . May, Jack . Proceedings of the November 30--December 1, 1965, Fall Joint Computer Conference, Part I . 1965 . Fall Joint Computer Conference . Las Vegas, Nevada . 63–75 . 10.1145/1463891.1463897. free .
• Further Advances in Two-dimensional Input-output by Typewriter Terminals . ACM . Klerer, Melvin . Grossman, Fred . Proceedings of the November 14–16, 1967, Fall Joint Computer Conference . November 1967 . Fall Joint Computer Conference . Anaheim, California . 675–687 . 10.1145/1465611.1465701.

Notes and References

1. A user oriented programming language . Klerer, Melvin . May, Jack . The Computer Journal . 1965 . 8 . 2 . 103–109 . 10.1093/comjnl/8.2.103. free .
2. Book: Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals . Prentice-Hall . Sammet, Jean . 1969 . 284–294 . 0-13-729988-5.
3. Book: Reference Manual . Columbia University . Klerer, Melvin . May, Jack . 1965 . Hudson Labs, Dobbs Ferry, NY.