Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

ALGOL 60
     
         ALGOrithmic Language 1960.
     
        A portable language for scientific computations.  ALGOL 60 was
        small and elegant.  It was {block-structured}, nested,
        {recursive} and {free form}.  It was also the first language
        to be described in {BNF}.
     
        There were three {lexical} representations: hardware,
        reference, and publication.  The only structured data types
        were {arrays}, but they were permitted to have lower bounds
        and could be dynamic.  It also had {conditional expressions};
        it introduced :=; if-then-else; very general "for" loops;
        switch declaration (an array of statement labels generalising
        {Fortran}'s {computed goto}).  Parameters were {call-by-name}
        and {call-by-value}.  It had {static} local "own" variables.
        It lacked user-defined types, character manipulation and
        {standard I/O}.
     
        See also {EULER}, {ALGOL 58}, {ALGOL 68}, {Foogol}.
     
        ["Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60", Peter Naur
        ed., CACM 3(5):299-314, May 1960].
     
        (1995-01-25)