There were proposals for a universal language by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and also by the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik. It was decided to organize a joint meeting to combine them. The meeting took place from May 27 to June 1, 1958, in Zürich and was attended by the following people: * Friedrich L. Bauer, Hermann Bottenbruch, Heinz Rutishauser, and Klaus Samelson (from the GaMM) * John Backus, Charles Katz, Alan Perlis, and Joseph Henry Wegstein (from the ACM).