John Backus on Creating FORTRAN

HN recommends it because hearing pioneers explain early computing in their own words conveys the context and excitement of the era.

Grady Booch interviews John Backus, who led the IBM team that created FORTRAN in 1957, for the Computer History Museum in 2006. Backus describes the development of the first successful high-level language and its compiler. The interview runs 88 minutes.