Programming language timeline

TIMELINE History of Programming Languages

    Predecessor(s) YEAR  PRODUCT -- Developer, Company

                *  1840~ FIRST PROGRAM -- Ada Lovelace
              ( *  1848  Boolean algebra -- [George Boole]? )
                *  1947  PLANKALKUEL? -- Konrad Zuse
                *  1956  FORTRAN Backus
              ( *  1957  [General Problem Solver]? -- Newell )
                *  1958  ALGOL
                *  1959  LISP McCarthy?
                *  1960  COBOL Committee
            ALGOL  1960  Algol 60
       FORTRAN II  1962  FORTRAN IV
                *  1962  APL -- Iverson
                   1962  Simula?
          ALGOL60  1964  PL 1
              ? *  1965  BASIC
                   1966  Coral66? Real Time version of Algol 60
                   1967  BCPL -- [Martin Richards]?
     Fortran+LISP  1967  MUMPS -- [Massachusetts General Hospital]?
          Algol60  1968  Algol68?
                   1970  Forth [Chuck Moore]?
            ALGOL  1971  Pascal -- [Nicklas Wirth]?,Jensen
           B BCPL  1972  C -- Dennis Ritchie
                *  1973  PROLOG -- [Alain Colmeraurer]? 
             LISP  1975  Scheme -- [Gerald Jay Sussman]?, [Guy Lewis Steele Jr.]?
            BASIC  1975  Altair BASIC -- Bill Gates, [Steve Allen]?
            MUMPS  1977  X11.1 ANSI Standard MUMPS
       FORTRAN IV  1978  FORTRAN77
              ( *  1978  VISICALC? -- Dan Bricklin, Frankston )
              ( *  1979  VULCAN DBASE?-II -- Ratliff )
           Pascal  1979  Green -- Jean Ichbiah et al., [US Department of Defense]?
                ?  1980? SMALLTALK?-80
            Green  1983  Ada -- US Dept of Defense
           Pascal  1983  [Turbo Pascal]? -- [Philipe Kahn]?
                   1984  [Standard ML]?
        1977MUMPS  1985  1984 MUMPS 
          ( dBase  1984  CLIPPER? -- Nantucket )
          ( dBase  1985  PARADOX? -- Borland )
       SIMULA OOP  1986  Eiffel -- Meyer
              ( *  1987  HYPERCARD? -- Apple )
              ( *  1987  SQL-1 )
                   1987  Perl
        dBase-III  1988  dBaseIV?
                   1988  Tcl [John Ousterhout]
     Turbo-Pascal  1989  Turbo-Pascal+OOP -- Borland
                C  1989  Standard C -- ANSI X3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990)
                   1990  Haskell
        1984MUMPS  1990  1990 MUMPS        
                   1991  Python
          ( SQL-1  1992  SQL-2 )
 Turbo-Pascal+OOP  1992  Borland Pascal
                   1993  Ruby
 Pascal Modula-II  1994  OBERON? -- Wirth
           Ada 83  1995  Ada 95 -- ISO
   Borland Pascal  1995  Delphi(1) -- Borland
 C++ Internet OOP  1995  Java -- Sun Microsystems
        1990MUMPS  1995  1995 MUMPS 
        DELPHI(5)  2001  KYLIX -- Borland

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Things with unknown or questionable dates:

	    C+OOP  198? C++ -- Bjarne Stroustrup
              C++  1998  ISO Standard C++ 
                *  197?  sh (Bourne Shell) -- Bourne
               sh  19??  ksh (Korn Shell) -- Dave Korn
              ksh  199?  zsh (Z Shell)

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Legend:

 OLD    <> NEW
 Predecessor(s) etc   YEAR  PRODUCT -- developer, Company
 (   Item  ) non 'universal programming language'
 * <YEAR>  newly developed

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This format is editable much more easily than a table (which I tried first) and everybody can contribute very easily or make modifications. A donation from de.wikipedia.com ;-) --StefanRybo

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