Wednesday · November 11, 2026

Edited daily

American history, reported as it happened

Made for the 250th

The events of October 15 · Read the full edition → · More from October 15 →

19561776 Club

IBM hands programmers a manual for talking to a machine in algebra

The FORTRAN Automatic Coding System manual reaches the IBM 704's users three years after Backus pitched a way around hand-written machine code.

By 1956, programming the IBM 704 meant writing in assembly language by hand. In October 1956, IBM issued the first published reference manual for the language John Backus's team had spent three years building. It documented a compiler that let scientists write calculations in something close to ordinary algebra and have the machine translate it into instructions itself. The manual gave programmers the language's design before the first compiler shipped the following spring…

1776 Club

This story is held for members.

Members read every story of the day — and tomorrow's, and the next.

Join the 1776 Club

$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime

More from October 15

Hazel comes ashore in the Carolinas; by nightfall it is drowning Toronto

A Category 4 landfall near Calabash and a flash flood on the Humber River happen hundreds of miles apart, on the same day.

Graham's riders break the Tory line at Raft Swamp; darkness ends North Carolina's last battle

Four days before Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, a swamp causeway fight scatters the last organized Loyalist force in the state.

A Titan IVB rises from Cape Canaveral, carrying Cassini toward Saturn

The seven-year voyage begins with 72 pounds of plutonium and a DVD of 616,400 signatures tucked aboard.

The Fly's Eye detector catches a flash of ultraviolet light that shouldn't be possible under the physics of the day.

Read this as a member →

Read the full October 15 edition →Everything that happened on October 15 →

More from Cold War America

Tehran mobs and army units seize the capital; Mosaddegh is under arrest by nightfall

A forged royal decree and CIA cash turned the streets against the prime minister who nationalized Iran's oil.

Washington expels the Soviet consul who wouldn't produce Oksana Kasenkina

Eight days after she jumped from his consulate's third-floor window, Jacob Lomakin is handed his passport home.

Eisenhower signs the proclamation: Hawaii is now the 50th state

The order follows a territorial vote in which 94 percent said yes to joining the Union.

Marine Corps' first Black Medal of Honor recipient is honored in Washington

Eighteen months after he smothered a grenade to save his platoon, James Anderson Jr.'s parents accept the medal in his place.

The Daily Record · free by email

Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one featured story, one quote, and today's flag status. Free, every morning.

The full experience

Read every story, narrated, in the app.

Take this story with you.

The complete daily edition, the deep-cut narration, and a library that's yours — the 1776 Club lives in the app.

Your membership comes with you — every event, narrated, with flag alerts, CarPlay, and your saved library.