I followed a link from Frank da Cruz‘s IBM 704 page at Columbia to George Michael’s 704 page, which is part of his Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing. I sent an email asking if George or his colleagues remembered the Fortran ‘Tome’.
George replied:
1. I do not recall any book called the ‘Tome,’ although I was one of the first users of the original Fortran. We had four 704s but if the ‘Tome’ existed, I never saw it.
2. One of our programmers, Bob Hughes worked with the original Fortran development team. I interviewed him and the interview is posted on our web site http://www.computer-history.info/Page1.dir/pages/Hughes.htmlI will call him to check on the existence of the ‘Tome’ and if he (still) has a listing of the original Fortran. But I’m not overly hopeful. In any event, I’ll let you know what results I get.
Bob, who was listed as one of the authors of the original 1956 IBM Fortran manual, said this in his interview with George:
“I worked on what they called the “first-level” documentation. And I made the biggest mistake of my life by not bringing a copy of that home. Now you understand why I missed making my first million dollars.”
So I’m guessing he didn’t bring a copy of the ‘Tome’ back to LLNL.
Update 2016/1/2/ and 2016/12/29: Updated URL’s for George Michael‘s web site. He passed away in 2008.
Update 2024/05/08: Updated Columbia URL to https.