benchmark The first major synthetic benchmark program,

intended to be representative for numerical (floating-point

intensive) programming. It is based on statistics gathered by

Brian Wichmann at the National Physical Laboratory in

England, using an Algol 60 compiler which translated Algol

into instructions for the imaginary Whetstone machine. The

compilation system was named after the small town of Whetstone

outside the City of Leicester, England, where it was designed.