FORTH was created by Mr. Charles H. Moore in 1969 at the National
Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. It was
created out of dissatisfaction with available programming tools,
especially for observatory automation.
Mr. Moore and several associates formed FORTH Inc., in 1973 for the
purpose of licensing and support of the FORTH operating system and
Programming Language, and to supply application programming to
meet customers requirements.
This version of FORTH is that issued by the Forth Interest Group (FIG)
which is centred in northern California. The group was formed in
1978 by FORTH programmers to encourage use of the language, and
interchange of ideas through seminars and publications.
FIG issue a language model, and code implementations for a number of
processor types, the publications being in the public domain; however,
each requires customisation to a particular target system. Customised
installations are the property of the customiser, who then holds copyright for his/her particular version.
This handbook does not set out to be an exhaustive text-book on the
language, merely an introduction to its use, and a general description
of the internal workings. Users seeking further information of FORTH
may like to consider joining the Forth Interest Group, whose address
is: P.O. Box 1105, San Carlos, California 94070, U.S.A.
FIG hold a number of books, some of which may be purchased in
this country through bookshops, and they should be happy to send you
a membership form/publications list.
A good book now available is 'Starting FORTH', by Leo Brodie,
published by Prentice-Hall; though this is based on polyFORTH*,
which has some differences to figFORTH.

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