ALGOL

ALGOL was a language understood by computers.

2079 native Zoe Heriot was able to speak to computers in ALGOL; using this ability, and logic tricks in the programming language, she gave the 20th century reception machine at International Electromatics an insoluble equation, causing it to break down and explode. (TV: The Invasion)

Begin. Real X sum positive. Delete square. Begin sum two, subscript J. Integer compute. Printout Y to the minus X variable one. Go to finish. Continue. Integrate on iversine. Now, continue printout continuous integration.Zoe

Behind the scenes

• ALGOL is in fact a real-world programming language, and had originally been developed in 1958. The language was in usage for computer programming at the time of The Invasion's production, and is now considered to have been of significant influence upon the development of later programming languages including Pascal, C+ and Basic. Some scholars even deem it to be "of central importance in any historical study of [programming] languages."
• Zoe's dialogue in The Invasion is however not strictly accurate to the conventions of the real-world language.
• Additionally, ALGOL's usage was primarily constrained to research work rather than commercial computers (like International Electromatics' receptionist).