The earliest report from the Fortran project is https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/BackusEtAl-Preliminary%20Report-1954.pdf; it says "The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System or briefly, FORTRAN, will comprise a large set of programs to enable the IBM 704 to accept a concise formulation of a problem in terms of mathematical notation and to produce automatically a high speed 704 program for the solution of the problem." I worked with John in 1974-1975, and I remember him saying he'd consulted with Gene Amdahl (704 architect) on floating-point and index registers, and realized that with those features in the hardware, it was time for higher-level programmer assistance. And In fact the first Fortran compiler introduced a variety of optimization techniques (reduction in strength, etc.) -- see the softwarepreservation.org site for references.
Re BCPL: This is an excellent topic -- one of the first "system programming" languages (but also consider the various Algol 58 dialects -- see https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol58impl/), easily and widely ported, inspiration for Thompson and Ritchie, etc.
Re: TX-2: Definitely mention its influence on the Xerox Alto. (This was one of the few times Bob Taylor felt it appropriate to inform Chuck Thacker of prior art.) The subsequent D machines also multitasked their microprocessor for I/O, but were much more complex. I think there are references for the details (see http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/, but it's likely not something you want to pursue).
Re COMIT: Again, I never studied it, but it inspired Danny Bobrow to do a LISP version called Meteor. And that may have inspired Warren Teitelman to include a lot of pattern matching features into BBN LISP/INTERLISP>
"Interestingly, the first FORTRAN compiler was for the IBM 701 and so depended on software floating-point, but FORTRAN was not announced until the later IBM 704, which had hardware floating-point support." Actually, it was always for the IBM 704. Backus had worked on Speedcode for the 701, with software floating point and index registers. He realized he need to do more for the IBM 704, with its hardware floating point and three index registers, thus the Fortran proposal in late 1953.
See:
John Backus. 1978. The history of Fortran I, II, and III.
The earliest report from the Fortran project is https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/BackusEtAl-Preliminary%20Report-1954.pdf; it says "The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System or briefly, FORTRAN, will comprise a large set of programs to enable the IBM 704 to accept a concise formulation of a problem in terms of mathematical notation and to produce automatically a high speed 704 program for the solution of the problem." I worked with John in 1974-1975, and I remember him saying he'd consulted with Gene Amdahl (704 architect) on floating-point and index registers, and realized that with those features in the hardware, it was time for higher-level programmer assistance. And In fact the first Fortran compiler introduced a variety of optimization techniques (reduction in strength, etc.) -- see the softwarepreservation.org site for references.
Re BCPL: This is an excellent topic -- one of the first "system programming" languages (but also consider the various Algol 58 dialects -- see https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol58impl/), easily and widely ported, inspiration for Thompson and Ritchie, etc.
Re CPL: see http://www.ancientgeek.org.uk/CPL/ .
Re: TX-2: Definitely mention its influence on the Xerox Alto. (This was one of the few times Bob Taylor felt it appropriate to inform Chuck Thacker of prior art.) The subsequent D machines also multitasked their microprocessor for I/O, but were much more complex. I think there are references for the details (see http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/, but it's likely not something you want to pursue).
Re Stretch/HARVEST : I don't know anything about it, but Fran Allen worked on it -- see https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102621818 .
Re COMIT: Again, I never studied it, but it inspired Danny Bobrow to do a LISP version called Meteor. And that may have inspired Warren Teitelman to include a lot of pattern matching features into BBN LISP/INTERLISP>
"Interestingly, the first FORTRAN compiler was for the IBM 701 and so depended on software floating-point, but FORTRAN was not announced until the later IBM 704, which had hardware floating-point support." Actually, it was always for the IBM 704. Backus had worked on Speedcode for the 701, with software floating point and index registers. He realized he need to do more for the IBM 704, with its hardware floating point and three index registers, thus the Fortran proposal in late 1953.
See:
John Backus. 1978. The history of Fortran I, II, and III.
History of programming languages.
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 25–74. https://doi.org/10.1145/800025.1198345;
see also https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/ .
See also
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/701.html
See also
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ibm700series/