Interactive Fortran for Power Engineering Education

The advantages and disadvantages of FORTRAN are described in relation to engineering education. The development of personal computers with an attendant emphasis on interactive capabilities and screen graphics is discussed together with the lack of these features in current versions of FORTRAN. A set of FORTRAN callable routines is described which has been developed to provide these interactive and graphing features. These routines have been written in machine language for Intel 8086 compatible microprocessors for efficiency and a high degree of portability. The ease with which these routines may be used is demonstrated with an example commonly used in electric power engineering.