Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Fourth-generation programming language" in English language version.
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J.W. Backus and W.P. Heising. FORTRAN. IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers, EC-13, Number 4, August 1964, pages 382-385. PDF [From the summary: ] The fundamental concepts of FORTRAN, the most widely used high-level, scientific programming language, are set forth and the significant characteristics are described in historical order from inception ...
By 1957, Bemer was still with IBM's Programming Research Department and had become an absolute devotee of what he called "automatic programming," that is, programming in a high-level programming language and using compilers to create the executable machine code. In March 1957, Bemer published a short note in a now-obscure magazine, Automatic Control, titled "How to Consider a Computer." In the piece, Bemer opined that "[a] computer should not be rented or purchased unless an automatic programming or coding system is furnished for its operation." He continued, presenting a view of the "new synthetic languages..in…process which will affect your use of computers."
Was macht nun 4GL anders als 3GL? ... Das klingt erst einmal spannend, ist aber insgesamt ein schwammiger Begriff und wurde in den 1980er Jahren vor allem für Marketingzwecke eingesetzt. Später wurde das Gebiet etwas eingegrenzt, um zum Beispiel auf Skriptsprachen eines geschlossenen Systems zu verweisen. ... Dann bleibt noch 5GL übrig. Darauf wollen wir in diesem Beitrag nicht näher eingehen. Man stelle sich einfach 4GL im Quadrat vor, und man kommt bei 5GL heraus. Es wird nur noch schwammiger. Aber es hat was mit künstlicher Intelligenz zu tun.[So what makes 4GL different from 3GL? ... At first glance, this sounds exciting, but it’s actually a rather vague term that was primarily used for marketing purposes in the 1980s. Later, the scope was narrowed somewhat to refer, for example, to scripting languages within a closed system. ... That leaves 5GL. We won’t go into detail about that in this article. Just imagine 4GL squared, and you end up with 5GL. It just gets even more vague. But it has something to do with artificial intelligence.]
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link){{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)You can't get a further level of abstraction than a 4GL so there can't be such a thing as a 5GL, just as you can't abstract further than meta-meta-metadata (which is what high-end repositories provide). ... As I said: a 4GL with extras.
Here, we can use it to figure out when 3GL enters common use. If a company is hiring using the term 3GL in an advertisement, then we can assume it's commonly understood in the community. The earliest reference I can find are from ads in 1966. As a neat aside, these ads are actually for junior programmers who will be trained to use 3GLs on the job. These early ones are primarily for COBOL jobs additionally. So this kind of generational language is in use as early as 1966.
Now, going back to my first point, this book points to an earlier use of the term 4GL. So can we find that? Well, kind of. I was able to dig up a 1973 computer world article about RPG2 of all things. If you don't remember, RPG is a language developed at IBM to replace punch card tabulators for report generation. This 1973 article calls RPG2 a, quote, true fourth generation language.