Introduction to COBOL

History of COBOL:-

In 1950’s there was a growing need for a high level programming language suitable for business data processing. To meet this demand the United States Department of Defense convened a conference on the 28^th and 29^th May 1958. Which was attended by users from civil and governmental organizations, computer manufacturers and other interested groups, out of this conference three groups were formed for the actual design of the language: one for short-term work, another for middle-term work and the third for long-term work.

In Sep. 1959, the short-term committee submitted a report to the directorate. In the same year the Directorate held a meeting and it was in this meeting that the new language was named COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language). Then COBOL was published in 1960.

On May 5 1961, COBOL-61 was published, the next version was published in 1965. In 1968, a standard version of the language was approved by American National Standard Institute(ANSI). This version is known as ANSI-68 COBOL (or) COBOL 68. The next version is COBOL-74. In 1985. a revised standard version was introduced. It is known as COBOL-85. It is the latest version of COBOL.