Phrase origin: Why do we "call" functions?

I'd like to point at CALL, a CPU instruction, and its origins. I'm not familiar with this, but it could reveal more than programming languages. The instruction is present at least since first intel microprocessors and microcontrollers were designed.

The first Intel microcontrollers were the 8008 and the 4004, designed in 01971. This is 13 years after this post documents the "CALL X" statement of FORTRAN II in 01958, shortly after which (he documents) the terminology became ubiquitous. (FORTRAN I didn't have subroutines.)

In the Algol 58 report https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/report/A... we have "procedures" and "functions" as types of subroutines. About invoking procedures, it says:

> 9. Procedure statements

> A procedure statement serves to initiate (call for) the execution of a procedure, which is a closed and self-contained process with a fixed ordered set of input and output parameters, permanently defined by a procedure declaration. (cf. procedure declaration.)

Note that this does go to extra pains to include the term "call for", but does not use the phraseology "call a procedure". Rather, it calls for not the procedure itself, but the execution of the procedure.

However, it also uses the term "procedure call" to describe either the initiation or the execution of the procedure:

> The procedure declaration defining the called procedure contains, in its heading, a string of symbols identical in form to the procedure statement, and the formal parameters occupying input and output parameter positions there give complete information concerning the admissibility of parameters used in any procedure call, (...)

Algol 58 has a different structure for defining functions rather than procedures, but those too are invoked by a "function call"—but not by "calling the function".

I'm not sure when the first assembly language with a "call" instruction appeared, but it might even be earlier than 01958. The Burroughs 5000 seems like it would be a promising thing to look at. But certainly many assembly languages from the time didn't; even MIX used a STJ instruction to set the return address in the return instruction in the called subroutine and then just jumped to its entry point, and the PDP-10 used PUSHJ IIRC. The 360 used BALR, branch and link register, much like RISC-V's JALR today.

I kept scrolling expecting to see this story:

> Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...

https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychap...

The instruction comes from programming languages.