FORTRAN (from 'formula translating system') was a major programming language first developed by IBM in the late 1950s. While originally intended for science and engineering, with substantial drawbacks for users seeking to conduct text processing, its wide availability in academic computing centres neverthless made it an attractive choice for Humanities scholars seeking to automate research processes.

COMIT was an early string processing programming language developed for IBM 700/7000 computers at MIT from the late 1950s to mid 1960s. It was particularly designed for linguistics and natural language processing, and was taught to humanists to aid their research in the 1960s.

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is a programming language first developed for business applications in the late 1950s. It was frequently referenced by humanists interested in applying computers and algorithms to their research, though infrequently used.

ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) was a programming language developed in the mid 1950s and often discussed in relation to humanities research applications, such as concordances or computational linguistics.

LISP is a longstanding high-level programming language first developed in the late 1950s. Within the humanities, it was applied to computational linguistics and natural language processing research.