THE COVER STORY IN THE AUGUST 1963 ISSUE PRESENTED A
COMPUTER PROGRAM DESIGNED TO EDIT NEWS STORIES IN A
NEWSPAPER STYLE.
Conte, John Hamblin, David
Young, Werner Rheinbolt, and
others produced preliminary
recommendations for an undergraduate program in computer
science. Joint Computer Conferences, co-sponsored with the
IEEE-Computer Society, were
held semi-annually, but questions had already surfaced
regarding the appropriateness of
ACM getting actively involved
in hardware exhibitions. Under
the leadership of Isaac Auerbach, the International Federation of Information Processing
Societies (IFIP) was gaining
worldwide recognition.
In 1960 Algol 60 had
appeared as the result of an
international collaboration, and
with its many elegant features,
including a highly structured
format, and recursive subroutines, proved that a programming language designed by a
committee did not have to be
bureaucratic or convoluted.
A revised version of the Algol
60 Report was published in the
January 1963 issue of CACM,
and in the various issues of that
period, there were many so-called “Certifications” of Algol
algorithms that were a consequence of the universal interest
in the language.
From time to time throughout my CACM editorship and
afterward I contributed my own
work and opinions. In the April
1969 issue, (when Stuart Lynn
was EIC), in a piece entitled
“On the ACM Publications,” I
reported on the conclusions of
an ad hoc committee of the Editorial Board established to
respond to a request for the
ACM President to formulate a
five-year policy for Council consideration. On rereading that
report I am struck by the extent
to which issues discussed there
continue to demand attention
to this very day when the shape
of CACM is being recast.
One question, which certainly survives, was how to make
better use of technology in
ACM’s publications. In those
days technology was directed to
automatic indexing and abstraction, selective dissemination of
information, and to the publishing process itself. There was a
strong feeling that ACM was not
taking sufficient advantage of
the expertise of its membership.
Gerry Salton, in “Towards a
Publication Policy for ACM,”
(CACM, Jan. 1966, p. 2), presented a strong case for making
it possible to submit papers in
machine-readable form. Today it
is a matter of coming to terms
with the Internet, blogs, and
other online dissemination of
facts and opinions.
One question that was
debated, but for which there is
now a different answer than
originally given, was the necessity for articles to be robustly
refereed. CACM’s Editorial
Board took the position (which
