Predecessor(s)  YEAR  PRODUCT -- Developer, Company

                  *  1840~ FIRST PROGRAM -- Ada Lovelace
                  *  1945  Plankalkül -- Konrad Zuse 

Table of contents 1 1950 2 1960 3 1970 4 1980 5 1990 6 2000

1950

                  *  1952  A-0 -- Grace Hopper
                     1954  Mark I Autocode -- Tony Brooker[?]
                A-0  1954  ARITH-MATIC -- Grace Hopper
                A-0  1955  MATH-MATIC -- Grace Hopper
                A-0  1955  FLOW-MATIC -- Grace Hopper
                A-0  1955  FORTRAN -- Backus
         FLOW-MATIC  1957  COMTRAN[?] -- Bob Bemer[?]
                ( *  1957  General Problem Solver[?] -- Newell )
            FORTRAN  1958  FORTRAN II[?] -- Backus
            FORTRAN  1958  Algol 58
                  *  1959  LISP McCarthy 

1960

 FLOW-MATIC COMTRAN  1960  COBOL The Codasyl[?]Committee
              ALGOL  1960  Algol 60
              ALGOL  1960  JOSS
         FORTRAN II  1962  FORTRAN IV
                  *  1962  APL -- Iverson
            ALGOL60  1962  Simula
         FORTRAN II  1962  SNOBOL -- Griswold, et al.
            ALGOL60  1963  CPL -- Barron, Strachey, et al.
             SNOBOL  1962  SNOBOL3 -- Griswold, et al.
           CPL LISP  1964  COWSEL Burstall, Popplestone
            ALGOL60  1964  PL 1
   FORTRAN II, JOSS  1964  BASIC -- Kemeney and Kurtz
         FORTRAN II  1966  FORTRAN IV
               LISP  1966  ISWIM Peter J. Landin[?]
            ALGOL60  1966  CORAL66 Real Time version of Algol 60
                CPL  1967  BCPL -- Martin Richards[?]
       Fortran LISP  1967  MUMPS -- Massachusetts General Hospital[?]
             Simula  1967  Simula67
            SNOBOL3  1967  SNOBOL4 -- Griswold, et al.
            Algol60  1968  ALGOL 68 -- Wijngaarten, et al.
             COWSEL  1968  POP-1[?] -- Burstall,  Popplestone
                     1968  Forth -- Chuck Moore[?] (first paper, 1970) 

1970

             POP-1   1970  POP-2[?] 
            ALGOL60  1971  Pascal -- Niklaus Wirth, Jensen
           Simula67  1972  SMALLTALK Environment -- SMALLTALK[?]--Digitalk
             B BCPL  1972  C -- Dennis Ritchie
                  *  1973  PROLOG -- Alain Colmeraurer[?] 
              BASIC  1973  COMAL
               LISP  1975  Scheme -- Gerald Jay Sussman, Guy Lewis Steele Jr.[?]
              BASIC  1975  Altair BASIC -- Bill Gates, Steve Allen
          C FORTRAN  1976  RATFOR -- Brian Kernighan
              MUMPS  1977  X11.1 ANSI Standard MUMPS

         FORTRAN IV  1978  FORTRAN77
                ( *  1978  VISICALC -- Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston)
           C SNOBOL  1979  Awk -- Al Aho[?], Brian Kernighan
                ( *  1979  VULCAN DBASE-II -- Ratliff )
            Algol68  1979  Green -- Jean Ichbiah et al., United States Department of Defense

1980

         C Simula67  1980  C with Classes -- Bjarne Stroustrup
           Simula67  1980  SMALLTALK[?]-80 -- Digitalk
              Green  1983  Ada -- US Dept of Defense
     C with Classes  1983  C++ -- Bjarne Stroustrup
             Pascal  1983  Turbo Pascal -- Anders Hejlsberg
                 *   1984  Standard ML[?] ML = Meta-Language
          1977MUMPS  1985  1984 MUMPS 
            ( dBase  1984  CLIPPER[?] -- Nantucket )
            ( dBase  1985  PARADOX[?] -- Borland )
           Simula67  1986  Eiffel -- Meyer
                ( *  1987  HyperCard -- Apple )
                ( *  1987  SQL-1 )
                Awk  1987  Perl -- Larry Wall
             MATLAB  1988  Octave
          dBase-III  1988  dBaseIV
           Awk Lisp  1988  Tcl -- John Ousterhout
       Turbo-Pascal  1989  Turbo-Pascal+OOP -- Borland
                  C  1989  Standard C -- ANSI X3.159-1989 (adopted by ISO in 1990)
   Pascal Modula-II  1989  OBERON -- Wirth

1990

                     1990  Haskell
          1984MUMPS  1990  1990 MUMPS        
                     1991  Python -- Guido van Rossum
            ( SQL-1  1992  SQL-2 )
   Turbo-Pascal OOP  1992  Borland Pascal[?]
                     1993  Brainfuck -- Urban Mueller
     Perl Smalltalk  1993  Ruby
                     1993  Lua
             Ada 83  1995  Ada 95 -- ISO
     Borland Pascal  1995  Delphi(1) -- Borland
   C++ Internet OOP  1995  Java -- Sun Microsystems
          1990MUMPS  1995  1995 MUMPS 
     Standard ML,84  1997  SML'97  
                C++  1998  C++98 -- ANSI/ISO Standard C++ 

2000

                     2000  Joy -- Manfred von Thun
          DELPHI(5)  2001  KYLIX -- Borland
          Whitespace 2003  Whitespace -- Edwin Brady and Chris Morris

Things with unknown or questionable dates:

                  *  197?  sh (Bourne Shell) -- Bourne
                 sh  19??  ksh (Korn Shell) -- Dave Korn
                ksh  199?  zsh (Z Shell)
           HyperCard 199?  AppleScript -- Apple
                   * 1990  Self -- Sun Microsystems Inc.
           Self Java 199?  LiveScript -- Brendan Eich, Netscape (Self inspired, made for Java interactions)
          LiveScript 1995  JavaScript -- Netscape
          JavaScript 1997  ECMAScript -- ECMA TC39-TG1
                   * 2003  C# -- Microsoft
                     2003  Rikstation[?]

Legend:

 OLD    <> NEW
 Predecessor(s) etc   YEAR  PRODUCT -- developer, Company
 (   Item  ) non 'universal programming language'
 * <YEAR>  newly developededition