What is APT?
< Unbounded Enthusiasm Mode > It stands for Automatically Programmed Tool, it’s a programming language, and to some extent it’s an architecture. An Association of Computing Machinery document states that it is the oldest programming language of any kind still in use. (It resulted from a study done at the MIT Servomechanism Laboratory in 1952 under the sponsorship of the Air Materiel Command. A prototype ran on the Whirlwind computer in 1955. We believe that the first commercially available version was released by IBM in 1958 for the IBM 704 computer.) It has been listed in most dictionaries for decades. It offered tool path associativity, macros, transformations, pocketing, five axis tool control, complex surface definition and machining, complex tool shapes, and many other modern features before any CAD/CAM system (as defined today) even existed. The shelf life of an APT program far exceeds that of any other archival storage method. It defined an API back in the sixties. It’s still ha
