COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was developed specifically for business operations. It was created in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during a time when computers were becoming more prevalent in the business world. COBOL was designed to handle large amounts of data, particularly data related to business transactions and financial records. It was intended to be an easy-to-learn language that could be used by non-technical people, such as business analysts and accountants, to write computer programs. Today, COBOL is still used by many organizations for legacy systems that were developed using the language.