Algol *.*

This morning I spent an enjoyable hour or two wandering around the old city of York. In the Deanery gardens, to the side of York Minster, I came across the house of an 18th century astronomer named John Goodricke (I hadn't heard of him before - but then I don't know much about astronomy) and was intrigued to read on the plaque that he discovered the 'variable star Algol'.

I know 'Algol' (properly 'ALGOL') as an early high level programming language. I used it at university in the late 1970s. It was a very influential language, bequeathing us many good ideas, but also the 'Null Pointer Exception'! And in the late 1960s, a derivative of Algol named Simula became the first object-oriented programming language.  

I understood the name to have come from 'ALGOrithmic Language'. I didn't know it was also the name of star, but I can't find any evidence either supporting or rebutting the idea that the writers of the programming language knew that. 

Reading up on Algol the star, I read that it was:

'the first eclipsing binary to be discovered, being the prototype of the Algol variables'

(the emboldening is mine - indicating three computer science terms)

My first reaction was that this was some computer science geek making a private joke, but it turns out that sentence comes from the Collins Dictionary of Astronomy!