flow flowmatic originally known as b0 business language version 0 was the first englishlike data processing language it was developed for the univac i at remington rand under grace hopper during the period from 1955 until 1959 it had a strong influence on the development of cobol development hopper had found that business data processing customers were uncomfortable with mathematical notation innovations and influence first flowmatic was the first programming language to express operations using englishlike statements second flowmatic was the first system to distinctly separate the description of data from the operations on it its data definition language unlike its executable statements was not englishlike rather data structures were defined by filling in preprinted forms flowmatic was a major influence in the design of cobol since only it and its direct descendent aimaco were in actual use at the time several elements of flowmatic were incorporated into cobol defining files in advance and separating into input and output files qualification of datanames in or of clause if end of data at end clause on file read operations figurative constant zero originally zzzzzz where number of zs indicated precision dividing the program into sections separating different parts of the program flowmatic sections included computer environment division directory data division and compiler procedure division sample program a sample flowmatic program 0 input inventory filea price fileb output pricedinv filec unpricedinv filed hsp d 1 compare productno a with productno b if greater go to operation 10 if equal go to operation 5 otherwise go to operation 2 2 transfer a to d 3 writeitem d 4 jump to operation 8 5 transfer a to c 6 move unitprice b to unitprice c 7 writeitem c 8 readitem a if end of data go to operation 14 9 jump to operation 1 10 readitem b if end of data go to operation 12 11 jump to operation 1 12 set operation 9 to go to operation 2 13 jump to operation 2 14 test productno b against if equal go to operation 16 otherwise go to operation 15 15 rewind b 16 closeout files c d 17 stop end note that this sample includes only the executable statements of the program the compiler section the record fields productno and unitprice would have been defined in the directory section which did not use englishlike syntax notes hopper grace 1978 keynote address history of programming languages i acm pp1620 isbn0127450408 hopper grace 1959 automatic programming present status and future trends mechanisation of thought processes national physical laboratory symposium 10 her majestys stationery office pp 155200 cited in knuth donald trabb pardo luis august 1976 the early development of programming languages technical report computer science department school of humanities and sciences stanford university retrieved 20160319 sammet jean 1969 programming languages history and fundamentals prenticehall p316324 isbn0137299885 sammet jean 1978 the early history of cobol history of programming languages i acm pp199243 isbn0127450408 sperry rand corporation 1957 introducing a new language for automatic programming univac flowmatic this article is based on material taken from the free online dictionary of computing prior to 1 november 2008 and incorporated under the relicensing terms of the gfdl version 13 or later 