History of C Language:

C is the High-Level programming language that supports Structural Programming concepts. Before studying C language in detail, let us first see the history of C

C is developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 at Bell Laboratories, US.

Let us understand the history of C from the below table:

 Table Source: Javapoint

1. ALGOL: ALGOL is a High-Level language invented by the International Group in 1960. It was the 1st language to follow the Structure Programming Concept. This language become more famous in Europe but not that much in the US.
2. BCPL: Taking forward the concept of ALGOL, Martin Richards has invented BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) in 1967. Both languages were simply used for Academic purposes.
3. B: Ken Thompson in the year 1970 had invented the language call B. It was also called as Simple B language. He had developed this language by taking forward the concepts of BCPL. This was also mainly used for Academic purposes.
4. Traditional C: Now comes our most popular C language. It was invented by Dennis Ritchie in 1970 at Bell Laboratories. He is also called as Father of the C language. By taking the features of the above languages and adding some more extra features to them, he had developed this language known as ‘Traditional C’. Advance features like Data Types, Rich Libraries, etc. have been added in C and launched in the Market. Till now the above languages were only used for Academic purposes but C was not only used for Academic purposes but also for commercial purposes.
5. K&R C: In 1978, Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie has invented a book named ‘K&R C’ describing the ‘Traditional C’ programming language in it. So ‘Traditional C’ was also known by the book name ‘K&R C ‘ and this book had become very popular.
6. ANSI C: Since C had been become a very popular language and also it was being used for commercial purposes, so there were many objections made on C. So ANSI (American National Standard Institute) has approved that C as the Standardized High-Level programming language in the year 1983. Because of this C was also known as ‘ANSI C’. 
7. ANSI/ISO C: Later on, ISO (International Standard Organization) committee had also approved C as the Standardized High-Level programming language in the year 1990. Now C was also known by the name ‘ANSI/ISO C’
8. C99: After getting approval from such a Committee’s C had now become a more famous and most popular language as it was also now being used for commercial purposes. Later on, Standardization Committee had also approved C in 1999, coz of which is also called C99.

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