Autocoder  Autocoder is any of a group of assemblers for a number of IBM computers of the 1950s and 1960s. The first Autocoders appear to have been the earliest assemblers to provide a macro facility. Both "autocoder", and the unrelated "autocode", a term of the same era used in the UK for languages of a higher level, derive from the phrase "automatic coding". This referred generally to programs which eased the burden of producing the numeric machine language codes of programs. "Autocoding" is seen occasionally, and can refer to any kind of programming system. In some circles "autocoder" could be used generically to refer to what is now called a macro-assembler. The first assembler, Symbolic Programming System (SPS), was the assembler offered when the IBM 1401 originally was announced as a punched-card-only computer. SPS had different mnemonics and a different fixed input format from Autocoder. It lacked Autocoder's features and was generally used later only on machines that lacked tape drives, that is, punched-card only. The first Autocoders were released in 1955 for the IBM 702, and in 1956 for the almost compatible IBM 705. They were designed by Roy Goldfinger who earlier had worked on New York University's (NYU) NYAP assembler. These machines were variable word length commercial machines, as were many of the computers for which an Autocoder was released. Besides the 702 and 705, there eventually also were Autocoders for the IBM 1410 and 7010,  IBM 7030 (Stretch), 7070/7072/7074,  IBM 7080,  and the IBM 1400 series. The most well known Autocoder is that of the IBM 1401, undoubtedly due in part to the general success of that series of machines. Autocoder was the primary language of this computer, and its macro capabilities facilitated use of the Input/Output Control System which eased the programming burden. Autocoder also had the ability to process code written for SPS. The 1401 was available in six memory configurations, with 1400, 2000, 4000, 8000, 12000, or 16000 six-bit characters. The 8000-character model was the minimum needed to run Autocoder. A loadable object file, on punched cards or magnetic tape, could be produced on an 8000-character model which could then be run on a 4000-character machine.