English Chess Forum

JOVIAL is apparently a computer language devised in 1960 and used to this day in Air Traffic Control. At least that's the story behind today's (12/12) Air Traffic problems in the UK. Apparently derived from Algol for real time applications. Algol, I had thought died many years ago. Although advocated as theoretically superior to the then versions of FORTRAN and BASIC, in practice the latter two were easier to use to make things work.

It was also used, according to Wikipedia at least, in American aerospace and defence applications. They kept that semi-secret as today was the first time I'd heard of it.

Any number of chess players were involved directly or indirectly in the developments in computing that were taking place alongside the popularity of chess following the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match.

Roger de Coverly wrote: They kept that semi-secret as today was the first time I'd heard of it.

Someone needs to update the definition of secret or semi-secret to be:

"Something that Roger D de Coverly is not aware of"

I will update Wikipeadia to this effect.

Presumably opinions contrary to those of RDdeC must also be secret by this very definition.

I encountered JOVIAL on the suite of VAX 11/780s I conducted my DPhil research on at The University of Sussex.