COBOL

COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was released in 1959. It was the first language to be developed by a group of competitors working together with the objective of developing a language that would be usable on computers from each of the manufacturers. IBM, Burroughs, RCA, Remington Rand and others were all involved with it's development. It is one of the most widely used programming languages and is still used today for business applications.