It seems that SAS was originally written in PL/1, which was "first introduced by the IBM Company in 1964 in conjunction with its System/360 line of computers." Re. Pollack, Seymour and Theodor Sterling, A Guide to Structured Programming and PL/1, third edition, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980.

So the 16-year-old Mr. Goodnight was also a seer to be writing code in 1959 for a compiler that had yet to be introduced!

Edward Heaton, SAS Senior Statistical Systems Analyst, Westat (An Employee-Owned Research Corporation), 1550 Research Boulevard, Room 2018, Rockville, MD 20850-3195 Voice: (301) 610-4818 Fax: (301) 294-3992 mailto:EdwardHeaton@westat.com http://www.westat.com

-----Original Message----- From: Muhlbaier, Lawrence H. [mailto:lawrence.muhlbaier@DUKE.EDU] Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 11:47 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: January 1, 1960

Yes. From Jim's bio sketch on www.sas.com "Goodnight was born in Salisbury, North Carolina, in January 1943. He earned a Ph.D. in statistics from NCSU in 1971 and served on the NCSU faculty from 1972 to 1976."

The mainframe story is apocryphal.

Doc

"Stanley A. Gorodenski" wrote:

> My thesis advisor and Goodnight were graduates students together at the same > time SAS was being developed (early or mid '60's). Could Goodnight have been > 16 years old in 1960? > Stan > > "Soeder, Thomas" wrote: > > > >John, as I recall from when I took the "SAS Fundamentals: A Programming > > >Approach" class, the reason why SAS chose 1960 as their base is because > > >January 1, 1960, is the date Dr. Jim Goodnight, founder of SAS, developed > > >SAS on an IBM system. > > > > This would have been quite an accomplishment by the then 16 year old Jim. > > > > Tom Soeder > > Clinformatics, Inc. > > txs32954@gsk.com > > Sanders 1464B > > 919-483-6936

-- Lawrence H. ('Doc') Muhlbaier muhlb001@mc.duke.edu Assistant Research Professor Duke University Medical Center 919-668-8774 (office) DUMC 3865 919-383-0595 (home) Durham, NC 27710-7510 919-668-7057 (FAX)