SNOBOL

SNOBOL (StriNg Oriented and symBOlic Language) is a series of computer programming languages developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky, culminating in SNOBOL4. It was one of a number of text-string-oriented languages developed during the 1950s and 1960s; others included COMIT and TRAC.

SNOBOL4 stands apart from most programming languages of its era by having patterns as a first-class data type (i.e. a data type whose values can be manipulated in all ways permitted to any other data type in the programming language) and by providing operators for pattern concatenation and alternation. In later object-oriented languages, such as JavaScript, patterns are a type of object, and admit various manipulations. Further, strings generated during execution can be treated as programs and executed (as in the eval function of other languages).

SNOBOL4 was quite widely taught in larger US universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s as a text manipulation language in the humanities.

Church & Dwight

Church & Dwight Co, Inc. is a major American manufacturer of household products that is based in Ewing, New Jersey. While it manufactures many items, it is best known for its Arm & Hammer line which includes baking soda and a variety of products made with it. Church & Dwight was ranked 723 in the Fortune 500 listing of companies in 2010.

History

The company was founded in 1896 to unify two companies created by John Dwight of Massachusetts and his brother-in-law, Austin Church of Connecticut. Their partnership had begun in 1846 with the two founders selling sodium bicarbonate (also known as baking soda) that they refined in Dwight's kitchen.

The Arm & Hammer logo, which dates back to the 1860s, is often incorrectly claimed to have originated with tycoon Armand Hammer. Hammer was so often asked about the Church & Dwight brand, however, that he attempted to buy the company. While unsuccessful, Hammer's Occidental Petroleum in 1986 acquired enough stock for him to join the Church & Dwight board of directors.