History of COBOL

i. In 1959, the new language named COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was introduced keeping in mind the business purpose applications.

ii. The board of directorate which is known as CODASYL (Conference on Data System Language) COBOL programming language committee established a COBOL maintenance committee to keep COBOL in step with the times. The first COBOL compiler became available in early 1962.

iii. The next version with some new additions was published in 1965. In August 1968 a standard version of the language was approved by the American National Standard Institute (ANSI).

iv. This standard version was again modified in 1974 and is known as ANSI-74 COBOL or COBOL -74.

v. The revision process has been continuous and in 1985 a revised standard was introduced. This standard was known as COBOL-85.