AFAIK PL/I was originally called Fortran VI as it was too advanced to be
called Fortran V (as the successor of Fortran IV). It was renamed to NPL
after the GUIDE people demanded that it include COBOL's file I/O
processing. Afterwards it was renamed to PL/I, as you said. The / was
from OS/360 (or System/360). The roman I (not 1) was to preserve the
link to its being originally called Fortran VI.
John Ehrman wrote:
My first SHARE meeting was in San Francisco in February 1964, and the
first session was a report by the "3-by-3" committee to describe what had
been rumored as "Fortran 6". It was then called the New Programming
Language (NPL). Because the NPL acronym also applied to the UK's National
Physical Laboratory (equivalent to the US Bureau of Standards), the name
was later changed to PL/I.
The 3x3 team was 3 IBMers (C.W. Medlock, Bernice Weitzenhoffer, and George
Radin (later of RISC fame)) and 3 customers (Hans Berg, Jim Cox, and Bruce
Rosenblatt (who said he came up with the idea of condition prefixes)).
They passed out copies of the language draft. One of the first questions
was from someone who noticed that integer variables were 32 bits long;
many were worried because current machines in 1964 had 36-bit words. There
was a lot of hemming and hawing by the IBMers because System/360 hadn't
been announced yet.
After much discussion on gent at the back of the room stood up and said
"This language should be called FUMBOL -- a mix of FORTRAN, ALGOL, and
COBOL". A moment later, another gent said "No, it should be called EBTKS"
(pronounced Eb-Tix). Silence. Then he said in a harsh voice "Everything
But The Kitchen Sink!".
Regards... John
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