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Massachusetts Computer Associates

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Programming language software company

Massachusetts Computer Associates (originally just Computer Associates), also known as COMPASS, was a software company founded by Thomas Edward Cheatham Jr. and based in Wakefield, Massachusetts from approximately 1961 to 1991, focusing primarily on programming language design and implementation, especially source-to-source transformation. It was acquired in the late 1960s by Applied Data Research.

Many well-known computer scientist were employed by, or consulted for, COMPASS at some point in their careers, including Michael J. Fischer, Stephen Warshall, Robert W. Floyd, and Leslie Lamport. Some of the systems they worked on include AMBIT/G and IVTRAN, a Fortran compiler for the ILLIAC IV.

Leslie Lamport wrote his influential "Time, Clocks" paper while he was at COMPASS.

The original vectorizing compiler for the ILLIAC IV was written at COMPASS with contributions by Lamport, who worked there part-time.

Robert Floyd's Treesort algorithm was published while Floyd was at COMPASS.

Corporate history

Applied Data Research (ADR) bought Massachusetts Computer Associates in the late 1960s. ADR was sold to Ameritech in 1986 and then by Ameritech to the (unrelated) Computer Associates of New York. Shortly after ADR was sold to Computer Associates, Compass was in turn sold to SofTech.

Notes

  1. David B. Loveman, "Program Improvement by Source-to-Source Transformation", Journal of the ACM 24:1:121–145 (January 1977)
  2. ^ "Leslie Lamport Receives Turing Award". Microsoft Research Blog. March 18, 2014.
  3. Carlos Christensen, Michael S. Wolfberg, Michael J. Fischer, "A Report on AMBIT/G", Massachusetts Computer Associates Inc., 1971
  4. Robert E Millstein, "Compiler Design for the ILLIAC IV", Massachusetts Computer Associates Inc., 1973
  5. Lamport, L. (1978). "Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system" (PDF). Communications of the ACM . 21 (7): 558–565. doi:10.1145/359545.359563. S2CID 215822405.
  6. "Supercomputer cruises at 80 million operations a second", Popular Science June 1979, p. p. 89
  7. Dennis Shasha, Cathy Lazere, Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists, p. 125
  8. Robert W. Floyd, "Algorithm 113: Treesort", Communications of the ACM 5:8:434 (August 1962)
  9. Rosemary Hamilton, "Computervision turns believer after Compass helps convert software", Computerworld, July 14, 1986, p. 20
  10. Applied Data Research, Software Products Division Records, 1959-1987, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
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