Albert Eugene Smith

While at ONR and later at the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ships, Smith oversaw research contracts including Whirlwind and the Harvard calculators. Starting in 1951, Smith collaborated with Mina Rees and Grace Murray Hopper to organize a series of seminars on computing development. This led to the Navy's Digital Computer Newsletter. == COBOL ==

In April, 1959, a group of computer manufacturers and users met at the University of Pennsylvania to plan the development of a computer language for business applications. At the time, business-oriented languages were built to work with specific computer systems. This new effort would seek to build a language whose programs could be easily adapted to run on other computers. Gene Smith represented the Navy's Bureau of Ships at that meeting. The development was divided among three task forces: • Short Range – chaired by Grace Hopper • Intermediate Range – chaired by Gene Smith • Long Range – chaired by Saul Gorn The COBOL language evolved from proposals developed by the Short Range Task Force. Smith remained active in the COBOL community through the Conference on Data System Languages (CODASYL) until his retirement. ==References==