History and evolution of compilers

I am interested in the history and evolution of programming, and
especially the history of compilers...


Can anyone give me an overview of the history of programming and
compilers, from the beginning, when you programmed the first computers
(40ies?), with switches or perhaps punched cards (50ies?) to the
introduction of compilers (what was the first "compiler"?), reaching
more abstract levels, such as assembler mnemonic instructions instead
of machine code, and the introduction of higher level programming
languages (with their compilers) like fortran and cobol and so on?


I'd like the major milestones and their points in time...


Anyone?


/Martin Hellspong
[I don't think that lengthy historical treatises are appropriate for
comp.compilers (unless they're really interesting, of course) but
pointers to on- and off-line resources would be interesting. Look at
the Annals of the History of Computing, a quarterly originally
published by AFIPS and now by the IEEE, and the History of Programming
Languages conference proceedings published by SIGPLAN. The first
compiler I know of was probably a prececessor to Cobol written by
Grace Hopper in the early 1950s. -John]




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