Autocode

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Autocode is the name of a family of "simplified coding systems", later called <a href="/facts/High-level_programming_language/smjECUhx">programming languages</a>, devised in the 1950s and 1960s for a series of  <a href="/facts/Digital_computer/SQe1aK05">digital computers</a> at the Universities of <a href="/facts/University_of_Manchester/PwJzEj8h">Manchester</a>, <a href="/facts/University_of_Cambridge/0la7aX9o">Cambridge</a> and <a href="/facts/University_of_London/spIRAx9B">London</a>. Autocode was a generic term; the autocodes for different machines were not necessarily closely related as are, for example, the different versions of the single language <a href="/facts/Fortran/m1KqjcMU">Fortran</a>.
</p><p>Today the term is used to refer to the family of early languages descended from the <a href="/facts/Manchester_Mark_1/S8wpt6U5">Manchester Mark 1</a> autocoder systems, which were generally similar. In the 1960s, the term autocoders was used more generically as to refer to any <a href="/facts/High-level_programming_language/smjECUhx">high-level programming language</a> using a <a href="/facts/Compiler/WNfCDFJe">compiler</a>. 
Examples of languages referred to as autocodes are <a href="/facts/COBOL/wVnhqs0k">COBOL</a> and <a href="/facts/Fortran/m1KqjcMU">Fortran</a>.
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Autocode open-in-new

Autocode