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	Learn more about John Backus in the online encyclopedia. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John Backus (born December 3, 1924) is an American computer scientist, notable as the inventor of the Fortran programming language, the first high-level language to achieve widespread use, and the Backus-Naur form almost universally used to define language syntax.
		Backus was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but grew up in Wilmington, Delaware.
		The difficulties of programming were acute, and in 1954 Backus assembled a team to define and develop Fortran for the IBM 704 computer.
	www.onlineencyclopedia.org /j/jo/john_backus.html (371 words)

	John and Sarah (Backus) Reynolds of Saybrook, Lyme and Norwich, Conn. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John and Sarah (Backus) Reynolds of Saybrook, Lyme and Norwich, Conn.
		"Artikles of agrements maid betwixt John Rennolls and Wolston Brockway of Seabrook as foloweth.
		John Reynolds' house, purportedly built in 1659, was still standing in 1928, and was still in the possession of descendants of the original owner.
	www.narnet.com /rfa/line15 (1601 words)

	Nation & World \| John Backus, developer of Fortran, dies at 82 \| Seattle Times Newspaper
		John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, has died.
		John Warner Backus was born in Wilmington, Del., in 1924.
		Backus' early work at IBM included computing lunar positions on the balky, bulky computers that were state of the art in the 1950s.
	seattletimes.nwsource.com /html/nationworld/2003627381_webbackusobit20.html (554 words)

	John Backus; developed pivotal Fortran language - The Boston Globe
		John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, died Saturday in Ashland, Ore., according to IBM, where he spent his career.
		John Warner Backus grew up in Wilmington, Del. His father was a chemist who became a stockbroker.
		Backus had what he would later describe as a "checkered educational career" in prep school and the University of Virginia, which he left after six months.
	www.boston.com /news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/03/21/john_backus_developed_pivotal_fortran_language (526 words)

	Notable Backuses (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Backus was one of the original promoters of the House telegraph system, and these interests demanding much of his time, he abandoned the book concern, and in 1850 removed to New York city in order to be at the centre of business operations.
		Backus was placed, on behalf of the stockholders of the New York Central railroad, upon an examining committee, to inspect the road's financial affairs and general management.
		Backus was constrained by impaired health to forego much of his earlier activity, yet his earnest interest in affairs, his valuable advice and his benefactions kept his name prominent.
	members.aol.com /jacob59/more/baldwin2/bkus_fmus2.html (1937 words)

	Report on John Backus
		John Backus (1924-) is the inventor of FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), the first widely used high-level computer programming language and the most widely used programming language of the sciences.
		John Backus was born in Philadelphia in 1924 and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware.
		John Backus was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1976, the Turing Award in 1977, and the Draper Prize for engineering in 1993 for his work on FORTRAN.
	www.cs.wlu.edu /~whaleyt/classes/313/Turing/Marshall.backus.html (860 words)

	John Backus Biography
		John Backus was a research physicist who trained under E.O. Lawrence at the Berkeley Laboratories and was on the faculty of the University of Southern California from 1945 to 1980, where he did research on gaseous discharges in strong magnetic fields.
		John received the Acoustical Society of America's Silver Medal (for musical acoustics) in 1986 "for pioneering research on the acoustics of woodwind and brass instruments and for bridging the gap between acousticians and musicians." John was an enthusiastic climber and holds the Sierra Club record for scaling 270 peaks six times.
		JOHN BACKUS is a modern Renaissance man. He holds a master's degree in music as well as a Ph.D. in physics.
	ccrma.stanford.edu /marl/Backus/BackusBio.html (903 words)

	Computing pioneer John Backus dies at 82 - Breaking - Technology - theage.com.au
		Backus also won a National Medal of Science in 1975 and got the 1993 Charles Stark Draper Prize, the top honour from the National Academy of Engineering.
		John Warner Backus was born in 1924 and grew up in born in Wilmington, Delaware.
		Backus met one of the machine's inventors, Rex Seeber _ who "gave me a little homemade test and hired me on the spot," Backus recalled in 1979.
	www.theage.com.au /news/Technology/Computing-pioneer-John-Backus-dies-at-82/2007/03/21/1174153079708.html (797 words)

	John Backus - SmartyBrain Encyclopedia and Dictionary (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John Backus (born December 3, 1924) is an American computer scientist, notable as the inventor of the first high-level programming language (FORTRAN), the Backus-Naur form (BNF, the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax), and the concept of Function-level programming.
		Backus spent the latter part of his career developing FL (from "Function Level"), a successor to FP.
		Backus was named an IBM Fellow in 1987, and was awarded a Draper Prize in 1993.
	smartybrain.com /index.php/John_Backus (533 words)

	Washingtonpost.com: WashTech Discussion (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John Backus: Because there are legal restrictions on how many partners the fund can have (less than 100) the investment requirements are pretty high.
		John Backus: I think there are more sheer number of start-ups in Silicon Valley that are good investments, but there is also a lot of money chasing those good investments.
		John Backus: The government is not only the biggest customer for many companies, but it is also behind the region's dominance in the Internet, electronic commerce and communications.
	yp.washingtonpost.com /wp-srv/zforum/99/henrys010799.htm (2407 words)

	John Backus
		John Backus was born in Philadelphia in 1924, and grew up near there in Wilmington, Delaware.
		Backus did study chemistry for awhile, and enjoyed the theoretical aspects of the science, but he disliked the lab work.
		Backus served as a corporal in charge of an anti-aircraft crew at Fort Stewart, Georgia, but his performance on an aptitude test changed the course of his military career when the Army decided to enroll him in a pre-engineering program at the University of Pittsburgh.
	www.thocp.net /biographies/backus_john.htm (1163 words)

	John Clayton Backus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John Clayton Backus was born March 14, 1866 in Smethport, the son of Major John Couch Backus, a prominent lawyer of that period, and Mary Almyra Backus.
		He was married December 11, 1899 to Lucy Blake of Eldred and had resided here all his life, where he was the owner of the Backus Novelty Works, and was prominent in all civic affairs.
		He was an inventor of note; the Backus Pin Setter, the Backus Checkhook, and the Backus Home Golf Trainer, and many other inventions are all products of his clever mind and hands.
	tallcedars.org /famous/Bois/backus.htm (205 words)

	E. Burdette Backus
		A lifelong naturalistic humanist, Backus was one of the 34 signers of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, along with such eminent Unitarian ministers as John H. Dietrich, Curtis Reese, Edwin H. Wilson, Raymond B. Bragg, and Lester Mondale, and philosopher John Dewey.
		The purpose of humanism, according to Backus, is "to make human life on our earth-home as rich and satisfying as possible." He thought that the methods people actually use to ameliorate life were based upon a naturalistic and not a supernatural understanding of the world.
		During the McCarthy period Backus faced a serious challenge from an influential faction within the congregation that did not like his humanism or his support for the ACLU and the Mental Health Association.
	www.uua.org /uuhs/duub/articles/burdettebackus.html (1004 words)

	ACM: Fellows Award / John Backus
		During the latter part of the 1950's Backus served on the international committes which developed ALGOL 58 and the very influential ALGOL 60, which quickly became the de facto worldwide standard for publishing algorithms.
		Backus spent the latter part of his career developing FL (from "Function Level"), a successor to FP.
		Backus was named an IBM Fellow in 1987, and was awarded a Draper Prize in 1993.
	awards.acm.org /citation.cfm?id=0703524&srt=all&aw=140&ao=AMTURING (407 words)

	John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times
		John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.
		Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Mr.
		Backus said, was to develop a system of programming that would focus more on describing the problem a person wanted the computer to solve and less on giving the computer step-by-step instructions.
	www.nytimes.com /2007/03/19/obituaries/20cnd-backus.html?ex=1332043200&en=adde3ee5a1875330&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink (1217 words)

	Backus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		John Backus spent his first years in Wilmington, Delaware and attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
		When he told the guide that he was looking for a job she told him to talk to a director.
		In 1959 he invented the Backus Naur Form (BNF), a standard notation to describe the syntax of a high level programming language.
	www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk /~history/Mathematicians/Backus.html (472 words)

	Good Math, Bad Math : Sad News: John Backus has died.
		John Backus was one of the most influential people in the development of what we now know as software engineering.
		Backus was the first person to come up with the idea of designing a different language, one which was easier for humans to read and write than machine code, and having the machine do the translation.
		John Backus won the Turing award in 1977, and used his Turing Award lecture as an opportunity to push the idea of non-imperative programming.
	scienceblogs.com /goodmath/2007/03/sad_news_john_backus_has_died.php (2618 words)

	John Backus Biography \| World of Computer Science
		Amazingly, Backus himself was diagnosed with a cranial bone tumor, and after it was removed a metal plate was installed in his head.
		Backus and his teammates realized that programmers would shy away from using FORTRAN unless it resulted in a program at least as efficient as they could have written themselves "by hand" in machine code, without FORTRAN.
		Backus approved of the new features found in ALGOL, but he was less impressed by the language designers' abilities to clearly describe those features.
	www.bookrags.com /biography/john-backus-wcs (1337 words)

	John Backus
		The caption reads: "John Backus, leader of the group which developed FORTRAN (1954-57), was an early SSEC programmer." After serving in the US Army in World War II, Backus received his BS in mathematics from Columbia's School of General Studies in 1949 (and, I believe, he also earned a Columbia Masters, year unknown).
		Besides FORTRAN, Backus also developed BNF (Backus Normal Form or Backus Naur Form, an application of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar to formal computer languages), the language that is used to formally describe computer languages, and was principal author of the Algol 60 Revised Report.
		Backus, John W., "The IBM 701 Speedcoding System", IBM, New York (10 Sep 1953), 4pp.
	www.columbia.edu /acis/history/backus.html (494 words)

	Untitled Document
		Backus was motivated to develop the language for several reasons.
		According to Backus, "the cost of programmers associated with a computer center was usually at least as great as the cost of the computer itself" (26, Wexelblat).
		Backus' third motivation in developing FOTRAN was to provide a language that allowed scientists to write programs that more closely resembled their thought processes.
	www.inf.fu-berlin.de /lehre/SS01/hc/pl/fortran.htm (1137 words)

	Backus biography
		John Backus spent his first years in Wilmington, Delaware and attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
		When he told the guide that he was looking for a job she told him to talk to a director.
		In 1959 he invented the Backus Naur Form (BNF), a standard notation to describe the syntax of a high level programming language.
	www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk /history/Biographies/Backus.html (501 words)

	John_Bailey.html
		JOHN (HADDAM FOUNDER)1 BAILEY was possibly born about 1618 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, and died June 17, 1696 in Haddam, Middlesex, CT. He married LYDIA BACKUS 1655 in Wethersfield, Hartford, CT, daughter of WILLIAM BACKUS and possibly SARAH GARDINER (sister of Lyon Gardiner).
		John was a viewer of Chimneys and ladders at Hartford in 1648.
		John Bailey had the next lot south of Thomas Smith and built his house on the rise of ground where the present house stands on the east side of the road.
	www.cowboyup.com /John_Bailey.html (1921 words)

	IBM Archives: John Backus
		John Backus was the developer of FORTRAN, for years one of the best known and most used programming systems in the world.
		He was an IBM programmer in New York City from 1950 to 1954; manager of programming research in New York City from 1954 to 1959; a staff member of IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., from 1959 to 1963; and an IBM Fellow in both Yorktown and San Jose, Calif., from 1963 into the 1990s.
		When Backus and a small band of IBM colleagues began their quest in 1954 for a programing system that would enable a computer to produce its own machine language programs, they weren't always sure what they would come up with.
	www-03.ibm.com /ibm/history/exhibits/builders/builders_backus.html (221 words)

	Descendants of James Sims: Third Generation (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-20)
		Josiah Backus was born in VA ca 1829.
		Elizabeth Backus was born in VA ca 1830.
		John Backus was born in VA ca 1831.
	www.fridley.net /sims/i0010181.htm (256 words)

	To the Artist, the Creator, John Backus: Thanks! \| dev.aol.com
		John Backus invented the method by which typewritten words and other human-recognizable symbols can be codified into a physical form (cards with holes punched into them?
		That's an accomplishment that already several generations of technology specialists have been able to apply to both advance the state of the art in technology and provide a livelihood for themselves and their families.
		I am so thankful for the imagination John Backus applied to the world as he found it.
	dev.aol.com /blog/kevinfarnham/to-the-artist-the-creator-john-backus-thanks (391 words)

	John Backus Summary
		Backus was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1924, and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware.
		In May 1946 Backus left the army, and his interest turned from chemistry and medicine to a field that would prove a bridge into the realms of computer science and mathematics.
		John Backus (born December 3, 1924) is an American computer scientist, notable as the inventor of the first high-level programming language (FORTRAN), the Backus-Naur form (BNF, the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax), and the concept of Function-level programming.
	www.bookrags.com /John_Backus (2469 words)

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