Valtrep is the PREDECESSOR to Fortran (was Lisa C and LisaFORTRAN)

Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 10:25:23 -0700 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca To: General at invalid.domain Subject: Re: Valtrep is the PREDECESSOR to Fortran (was Lisa C and LisaFORTRAN) I will humbly mention for consideration that RCA produced the "Spectra 70" line of computer systems starting in the mid/late-60's. "valtrep" (which, I too, have never previously heard of) might have been one of many things: an in-house development to avoid paying for a FORTRAN compiler, somebody's idea of a paired-down FORTRAN to reduce system requirements, some proprietary language developed by the system manufacturer, etc. Also for consideration, the period brochure about the Spectra 70 from: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.SPECTRA70.1965.10… states on page 21: ... A case in point might be when your programmers cannot express the solution to a problem concisely in one of the standard languages such as COBOL or Fortran. The extended assember "meta language" - as it is sometimes identified - is a powerful tool that permits the expression of unique application-oriented languages by your programmers. Might be just marketing-speak for a macro-assembler, and I'm not suggesting this was "valtrep", but if the computer was a Spectra 70, this may have been an available tool to inspire some in-house language development.