Richard Merrill

Richard Merrill was a Digital Equipment Corporation employee who invented the FOCAL programming language and programmed the first two interpreters for the language in 1968 and 1969, for the PDP-8. He also developed later versions of the interpreter for the PDP-7 and PDP-9, and he was most likely the author of the PDP-11 FOCAL interpreter.

Merrill also designed and programmed the EDIT-8 text editor (using paper-tape).

Merrill is an alumnus of Phillips Andover preparatory school and MIT.

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