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History of LISP

by Paul McJones — last modified 2008-07-04 12:06

Paul McJones, editor
paul@mcjones.org
http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/

Last updated July 4, 2008.

Abstract

The goal of this project is to locate source code, design documents, and other materials concerning the original LISP I/1.5 system, and as many of its follow-ons as possible. LISP was one of the earliest high-level programming languages and introduced many ideas such as garbage collection, recursive functions, symbolic expressions, and dynamic type-checking; it is still in use. This is a project of the Computer History Museum's Software Preservation Group to collect, preserve, and present historic software. The editor appreciates comments, suggestions, and donations of additional materials.

Contents

Acknowledgements

  • Bob Abeles, Paul W. Abrahams, John R. Allen, Jeff Barnett, Bruce G. Baumgart, Alan Bawden, Fred Blair, Robert Brayton, Daniel G. Bobrow, Phil Budne, Jérôme Chailloux, Rich Cornwell, L. Peter Deutsch, Deborah Douglas, Daniel J. Edwards, Edward Feigenbaum, Robert R. Fenichel, Tayssir John Gabbour, Richard Greenblatt, Jack Harper, Timothy P. Hart, Zane H. Healy, Charles L. Hedrick, Al Kossow, Alan Kotok, Paco Linux, Emílio C. Lopes, Klim Maling, Larry Masinter, J.P. Massar, John McCarthy, Jim Meehan, The MIT Press, David A. Moon, Joel Moses, Daniel L. Murphy, Marvin L. Minsky, Eric Norman, Julian Padget, Kent M. Pitman, Lynn H. Quam, Thomas C. Rindfleisch, SDF Public Access UNIX System (TWENEX.ORG), Stephen R. Russell, Robert A. Saunders, Tim Shoppa, Olin Sibert, Herbert Stoyan, Bob Supnik, Tetsuro Tanaka, Björn Victor, Eiiti Wada, JonL White.

LISP I and LISP 1.5 for IBM 704, 709, 7090

Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual

From the Preface to the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual [McCarthy et al. 1962]:

"The overall design of the LISP Programming System is the work of John McCarthy and is based on his paper 'Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine' which was published in Communications of the ACM, April 1960.

This manual was written by Michael I. Levin.

The interpreter was programmed by Stephen R. Russell and Daniel J. Edwards.

The print and read programs were written by John McCarthy, Klim Maling, Daniel J. Edwards, and Paul W. Abrahams.

The garbage collector and arithmetic features were written by Daniel J. Edwards.

The compiler and assembler were written by Timothy P. Hart and Michael I. Levin.

An earlier compiler was written by Robert Brayton.

The 'LISP I Programmer's Manual,' March 1, 1960, was written by Phyllis A. Fox.

Additional programs and suggestions were contributed by the following members of the Artificial Intelligence Group of the Research Laboratory of Electronics: Marvin L. Minsky, Bertram Raphael, Louis Hodes, David M.R. Park, David C. Luckham, Daniel G. Bobrow, James R. Slagle, and Nathaniel Rochester."

Source code

System

  • LISP system assembly listing. "FIELD TEST ASSEMBLY OF LISP 1.5 SEPTEMBER 1961", labeled "Bonnie's Birthday Assembly". Science and Technology Collection, M.I.T. Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, catalog number 1993.053, donated by Timothy P. Hart.
    • Jack Harper. Scan of listing. PDF (16MB)
    • Pascal Bourguignon. Reconstruction of assembly source code. .tar.gz at informatimago.com (background at Dusty Decks)
    • Rich Cornwell and Bob Abeles. Proofread reconstruction of assembly source code. unpacked
      • This should be runnable under SIMH or Rich's variation of SIMH for the IBM 704, but it still needs some debugging by someone with Lisp 1.5 experience or a desire to learn. Contact paul@mcjones.org if you are interested.
  • See also LISP 1.5 for CTSS, below.
  • LISP system assembly listing. Steve Russell may have in his archives "a listing of some version of 704/709/7090 Lisp". He says he'd be happy to donated his Lisp artifacts to the Computer History Museum, but it will be some time before he is able to search the depths of his archives. (Personal communication, 16 March 2005.)
  • LISP distribution tape listing. Listing of source distribution tape sent by Timothy P. Hart to John Allen. Source card images for LISP 1.5 plus the initial library written in LISP, including test cases, the compiled compiler, etc. Annotations by Allen pertaining to the conversion to a slightly different version of the machine, November 1964. Property of John R. Allen. (Personal communication, June 11, 2005.)

Applications

The only LISP 1.5 application source code encountered to date has been in various publications.

  • John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin. Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962. PDF [Posted here by permission of The MIT Press]
    • Chapter VIII. A Complete LISP Program - the Wang Algorithm for the Propositional Calculus. PDF
  • Berkeley and Bobrow, editors. The Programming Language Lisp : Its Operation and Applications. Information International, Inc., March 1964, and The MIT Press, April 1966. PDF (12MB) [Posted here by permission of The MIT Press]
    • Daniel G. Bobrow. The LISP Program for METEOR. Pages 249-259. PDF
      • See also: Daniel G. Bobrow. METEOR: A LISP Interpreter for String Transformations. Pages 161-190. PDF
      • See also: Daniel G. Bobrow. METEOR: A LISP Interpreter for String Transformations. Memo 51, Artificial Intelligence Projects, RLE and MIT Computation Center, April 24, 1963, 41 pages. PDF at MIT

        Earlier version of the two METEOR articles in Berkeley and Bobrow.

    • Malcolm Pivar and Elaine Gord. The LISP Programs for Inductive Inference on Sequences. Pages 260-289. PDF
      • See also: Malcolm Pivar and Mark Finkelstein. Automation, Using LISP, of Inductive Inference on Sequences. Pages 125-136. PDF
    • William Henneman. The LISP Program for the A-Language. Pages 318-325. PDF
      • See also: An Auxiliary Language for More Natural Expression – the A-Language. Pages 239-248. PDF
  • Lewis Mark Norton. ADEPT – A Heuristic Program for Proving Theorems of Group Theory. Ph.D. Thesis, MIT-LCS-TR-033, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1966, 178 pages. PDF at MIT

    Appendix III lists the source for ADEPT.

  • W.A. Martin. "Symbolic Mathematical Laboratory. Ph.D. Thesis, MIT-LCS-TR-036, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1967.

    Includes source listing.

  • Joel Moses. Symbolic Integration. Ph.D. Thesis, MIT-LCS-TR-047, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 1967, 268 pages.
    • Original MIT scan, with missing pages replaced. PDF
    • Grayscale scan (200dpi?) PDF at MIT

    Appendix F lists the source for SIN (symbolic integration) and SOLDIER (solutions of ordinary differential equations routine).

  • Marvin Minsky, editor. Semantic Information Processing. MIT Press, 1968.
    • Daniel G. Bobrow. Natural Language Input for a Computer Problem-Solving System. Pages 146-226. Appendix 3.2 is a listing of the STUDENT program.
    • Fischer Black. A Deductive Question Answering System. Pages 354-402. Appendix 6.1 is a listing of a basic version of the program.

Documentation

  • S. Russell. Writing and Debugging Programs. Memo 6, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center. No date, 7 pages. PDF at MIT
  • J. McCarthy. Notes on the Compiler. Memo 7, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center. No date, 2 pages. PDF at MIT
  • J. McCarthy. Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine. Memo 8, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, March 13, 1959, 19 pages. PDF at MIT
  • S.R. Russell. Explanation of Big "P" as of March 20, 1959. Memo 9, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, 4 pages. PDF at MIT
  • K. Maling. The LISP Differentiation Demonstration Program. Memo 10, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 6 pages. PDF at MIT
  • J. McCarthy. Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine. Memo 11, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, March 30, 1959, 17 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This memorandum is a continuation of Memo 8"

  • John McCarthy. Programs in LISP. Memo 12, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 7 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This memo depends only on the RLE QPR [Quarterly Project Report?] No. 53 discussion of LISP. This takes the form of allowing functions to be described by programs including sequences of Fortran-like statements, e.g. y=cons[ff[subst[A;y;z]];(A,B)]"

  • K. Maling. The Maling-Silver Read Program. Memo 13, Symbol Manipulation Language, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, 7 pages, no date but appendix says "1-20-59". PDF at MIT
  • J. McCarthy. The Wang Algorithm for the Propositional Calculus. Memo 14, Symbol Manipulation Language, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, 13 pages, no date. PDF at MIT
  • Daniel J. Edwards. LISP II Garbage Collector. Memo 19, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 2 pages. PDF at MIT
  • J. McCarthy, R. Brayton, D. Edwards, P. Fox, L. Hodes, D. Luckham, K. Maling, D. Park and S. Russell. LISP I Programmer's Manual. Computation Center and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1, 1960.
    • Copy 1: Computer History Museum Lot X????.200?, George Michael donation. PDF at bitsavers.org
    • Copy 2: Science and Technology Collection, M.I.T. Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, catalog number 1993.053, donated by Timothy P. Hart. Missing cover and Acknowledgements. PDF
  • Paul W. Abrahams. Character-handling Facilities in the LISP System. Memo 22A[?], Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, January 27, 1961, 12 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Robert Brayton. Trace-Printing for Compiled Programs. Memo 23, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 2 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Michael Levin. Arithmetic in LISP 1.5. Memo 24, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, April 28, 1961, 8 pages. PDF at MIT

    "As of present, the following parts of LISP 1.5 are working. This is an excerpt from the forth coming LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual."

  • Anonymous. Error Stops. Memo 25, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, May 10, 1961, 1 page. PDF at MIT
  • Michael Levin. LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual [Errata]. Memo 28, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 2 pages PDF at MIT

    "The manual is intended to apply to a version of LISP 1.5 called 'LISP 1.5 Export A' which has not yet been issued. LISP 1.5 systems preceding this version differ in certain details."

  • John McCarthy. A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation. Memo 31, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and Computation Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 39, Massachusetts, January 1962, 33 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This paper is a corrected version of the paper of the same title given at the Western Joint Computer Conference, May 1961. A tenth section discussing the relations between mathematical logic and computation has been added."

  • John McCarthy. On Efficient Ways of Evaluating Certain Recursive Functions. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 32, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Project MAC, no date, 5 pages. PDF at MIT
  • John McCarthy. A New Eval Function. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 34, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Project MAC, no date, 14 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Anonymous. LAP (LISP Assembly Program). Memo 35, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 4 pages. PDF at MIT
  • T. Hart and M. Levin. The New Compiler. Memo 39, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date (circa 1962?), 4 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This memo introduces the brand new LISP 1.5 Compiler designed and programmed by Tim Hart and Mike Levin. It is written entirely in LISP and is the first compiler that has ever compiled itself by being executed interpretively."

  • J. McCarthy, M. Minsky, P. Abrahams, R. Brayton, D. Edwards, L. Hodes, D. Luckham, M. Levin, D. Park, and T. Hart. Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual. Computation Center and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 14, 1961. Copy belonging to Jim Meehan. The cover has handwritten names McCarthy, B. Raphael (crossed out), and [Fred M.] Tonge. PDF
  • John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin. Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1962. PDF [Posted here by permission of The MIT Press]
  • Timothy P. Hart. MACRO Definitions for LISP. Memo 57, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, October 22[?], 1963, 4 pages. PDF at MIT
  • M.L. Minsky. A LISP Garbage Collector Algorithm Using Serial Secondary Storage. Memo 58 (Revised), Artificial Intelligence Project and Memorandum MAC-M-129, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 27, 1963, 4 pages (out of order). PDF at MIT

    "Paper to be presented at the First International LISP Conference, Mexico City, Mexico, December 30 – January 3, 1964."

    [Was this algorithm being contemplated for 7090 LISP on CTSS?]

  • Daniel J. Edwards. Secondary Storage in LISP. Memo 63, Artificial Intelligence Project and Memorandum MAC-M-128, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 27, 1963, 4 pages. PDF at MIT

    "Paper to be presented at the First International LISP Conference, Mexico City, Mexico, December 30 – January 3, 1964."

  • Timothy P. Hart and Michael I. Levin. LISP Exercises. Memo 64, Artificial Intelligence Project and Memorandum MAC-M-134, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 24, 1964, 27 pages. PDF at MIT

    A version of this appears in Berkeley and Bobrow.

  • Clark Weissman. LISP 1.5 Primer. Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc., Belmont, California, 1967. PDF

Applications

  • Anthony Valiant Phillips. A Question-Answering Routine. Memo 16, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, May 21, 1960, 20 pages. PDF at MIT
  • John McCarthy. Programs with Common Sense. Memo 17, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 9 pages.

    "This paper was presented at a Symposium on The Mechanization of Thought Processes, which was held at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex, England from 24th-27th November 1958. The papers and the discussions were published by H.M.S.O. in the Proceedings of the Symposium. This paper should not be reproduced without the permission of the author and of the Secretary, National Physical Laboratory."

  • Louis Hodes. Some Results from a Pattern Recognition Program using LISP. Memo 18, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 3 pages. PDF at MIT
  • John McCarthy. Puzzle Solving Program in LISP. Memo 20, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 2 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Paul W. Abrahams. The Proofchecker. Memo 21, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, January 25, 1961, 21 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Michael Levin. SIMPLIFY. Memo 27, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, no date, 5 pages [missing pages 2 and 4]. PDF at MIT
  • D.J. Edwards and T.P. Hart. The Alpha-Beta Heuristic. Memo 30 (revised), Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, October 28, 1963, 5 pages. PDF at MIT

    "(This is a revised version of The Tree Prune (TP) Algorithm, AI Memo 30, December 4, 1961.)"

  • T.G. Evans. A Heuristic program to solve Geometry Analogy Problems. Memo 46, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, October 24, 1962, 15 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Bertram Raphael. Computer Representation of Semantic Information. Memo 49, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, April 5, 1963, 12 pages. PDF at MIT

LISP 1.5 for CTSS

LISP 1.5 initially ran on the "bare machine" (with its own monitor called Overlord for handling tapes, reading and writing of core images, and taking dumps – see Appendix E of The Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual).

"We had a crisis in our research program in AI in the fall of 1965. Those of us who were using the LISP system on the IBM 7094 at Project MAC would soon be unable to use it further because the time-sharing system, CTSS, was being modified. CTSS and its follow-on system, MULTICS, were the key projects at MAC. The head of these projects was Prof. Fernando Corbató, known as Corby. Some of the students said “Project MAC” stood for Minsky Against Corby, although I believe that their relationship was quite cordial. I would later work closely with Corby on academic administration. He was a superb systems thinker, as his work on CTSS and MULTICS clearly showed.

All the people who had initially developed LISP for the IBM 7094 machine had by then left MIT; due to Minsky’s management style there was no one in charge of modifying LISP so that it would continue to run on CTSS. Since I needed to use the system for my research, I decided to make the modifications myself. I found an old listing of the assembly code for LISP which contained hand-written comments on errors and missing features written by the original group of programmers. I used this information to make patches in the binary version of LISP. In a weekend’s worth of work I was able to get the LISP system to operate under the modified version of CTSS." [Joel Moses. My Life.]

  • F.J. Corbató, M.M. Daggett, R.C. Daley, R.J Creasy, J.D. Hellwig, R.H. Orenstein, and L.K. Korn. The Compatible Time-Sharing System : A Programmer's Guide. The M.I.T. Press, 1963. PDF at bitsavers.org

Source code

  • LISP system assembly listing. CTSS LISP 1.5. Belonged to Joel Moses; he notes "It had handwritten annotations by some of the original group, possibly including Evans and Hart." Unfortunately Joel believes his listing was lost during one of his many interoffice moves. (Personal communication, 12 March 2005.)
  • LISP system assembly listing. CTSS LISP 1.5, 7 February 1966. [PDF to be available as soon as an 11"x17" scanner is located.] Donated by Robert R. Fenichel.

Documentation

  • Richard A. Robnett. Suggestions for LISP Time-Sharing System. Memo 50, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, April 3, 1963, 3 pages. PDF at MIT
  • William Martin and Timothy Hart. Revised User's Version: Time Sharing LISP. Memo 67 (Revised), Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-153 (Revised), Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 15, 1964, 8 pages. PDF at MIT
  • T. Hart. CTSS LISP NOTICE – Supplement to A.I. Memo No. 67. Memo 74, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-206, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 7, 1964, 4 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Robert R. Fenichel and Joel Moses. A New Version of CTSS LISP. Artificial Intelligence Memo 93, Project MAC Memorandum MAC-M-296, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, February 2, 1966, 13 pages, PDF at MIT

    "Summary: A new version of CTSS LISP is now available. The new system provides additional data storage and several new functions and constants. The I/O capabilities, EXCISE, the error comments, and several routines have been improved. Much irrelevant code and many bugs have all been removed.

    FAP source decks and BCD listings are available. The decks are organized so as to ease the job of assembling private LISP systems in which unneeded features are abset.

    Without reassembling, the user can create a private LISP system in which the data storage space has been arbitrarily allocated among binary program space, the push-down list, full word space, and free storage.

    It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the old version of LISP as described in AI Memos 67 and 74 (MAC M-153 and M-206)."

Applications

  • Warren Teitelman. EDIT and BREAK functions for LISP. Artificial Intelligence Memo 84, Memorandum MAC-M-264, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, no date, 31 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This memo describes some LISP functions which have been found to be extremely useful in easing the often painful process of converting the initial versions of LISP programs into final debugged code. They are part of a much larger system currently being developed but may be used as two independent packages. The break package contains a more sophisticated break function than that in the current CTSS version of LISP, which includes facilities for breaking on undefined functions as well as SUBRS and FEXPRS, plus a selective TRACE feature. The Edit package combines many of the features of the CTSS 'ed' with a knowledge of the structure of LISP (e.g., it knows about balancing parentheses). It eliminates the need to leave a LISP system to edit a function, and therefore one may edit even when track quote is exhausted. Edit will update a user's file upon request by constructing a new file containing all of the latest definitions of the functions in that file, even where some of them may currently be in the machine in compiled form."

  • William A. Martin. Syntax and Display of Mathematical Expressions. Memo 85, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-257, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 29, 1965, 22 pages. PDF at MIT

    Describes a picture compiler written in LISP running on 7090 CTSS LISP that communicated with a display program written in LISP running on a PDP-6.

  • Warren Teitelman. FLIP – A Format List Processor. Artificial Intelligence Memo 87, Memorandum MAC-M-263, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1966?, 65 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This memo describes a notation and a programming language for expressing, from within a LISP system, string manipulations such as those performed in COMIT. ..."

  • Adolfo Guzmán and Harold McIntosh. A Program Feature for CONVERT. Memo 95, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-305, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1966, 18 pages. PDF at MIT

    "A program feature has been constructed for CONVERT, closely modeled after the similar facility found in many versions of LISP."

  • Adolfo Guzmán. Polybrick: Adventures in the Domain of Parallelepipeds : A world without perspective. Artificial Intelligence Memo 96, Project MAC Memorandum MAC-M-308, May 1966, 41 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Joel Moses. Symbolic Integration. AI Memo 97, Artificial Intelligence Project, MAC-M-310, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 10, 1966, 17 pages. PDF at MIT

    "A program has been written which is capable of integrating all but two of the problems solved by Slagle's symbolic integration program SAINT. In contrast to SAINT, it is a purely algorithmic program and it has achieved running times two to three orders of magnitude faster than SAINT."

  • Joel Moses. Symbolic Integration II. AI Memo 97a, Artificial Intelligence Project, MAC-M-327, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 13, 1966, 12 pages. PDF at MIT

    "The current program can integrate all the problems which were solved by SAINT and also the two problems attempted by it and not solved."

  • Adolfo Guzmán and Harold V. McIntosh. CONVERT. Memo 99, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-316, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1966, 43 pages. PDF at MIT Also published in Communications of the ACM, Volume 9, Issue 8, August 1966, pages 604-615. ACM DL

    "A pattern-driven symbolic manipulation language and its preprocessor (an interpreter) are presented."

  • Harold V. McIntosh and Adolfo Guzmán. A Miscellany of CONVERT Programming. Artificial Intelligence Memo 130, Project MAC Memorandum MAC-M-346, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1967, 41 pages. PDF at MIT

    "A collection of examples to illustrate CONVERT."

  • Carl Hewitt. PLANNER: A Language for Proving Theorems. Artificial Intelligence Memo 137, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 1967, 65 pages. PDF at MIT

    Describes SCHEMATISE, "a proposal for a program that proves very elementary theorems through the use of planning", MATCHLESS, "a pattern matching program written in LISP ... most succinctly described as a cross between SNOBOL and CONVERT", and PLANNER, "a powerful tree searching language in which we could write SCHEMATISE and other tree searching theorem proving procedures".

LISP 1.5 for Univac M-460

The Univac M-460 was a military version of Univac 490. The LISP system was written by Timothy P. Hart and Thomas G. Evans at Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories.

The system was bootstrapped from Lisp 1.5 on the IBM 7090 using a cross-compiler and a small amount of machine language code for the lowest levels of the Lisp implementation. See:

  • Timothy P. Hart and Thomas G. Evans. Notes on Implementing LISP for the M-460 Computer. March 1964, pages 191-203 in Berkeley and Bobrow. PDF

    'This article describes the process used to implement LISP 1.5 on the Univac M 460 (an early military version of the Univac 490). This machine, which has been available to us on an open-shop basis, has 32000 register of 30-bit, 8 microsecond memory. It has an instruction set which is quite convenient for LISP, e.g., it is possible to load an index register (of which, incidentally, there are seven) from either the left or right half of the word addressed by the same index.'

    Includes LISP source code of interpreter.

LISP 1.5 for AN/FSQ-32/V

The AN/FSQ-32/V was a military computer with 48-bit words; only one was built and it belonged to System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California. The LISP system was written by Robert Saunders, with assistance from Tim Hart, Dan Edwards, Mike Levin, John McCarthy, and Steve Russell.

"The Q-32 implementation was the first LISP that did not run on an interpreter: all code was compiled before execution. Someone subsequently wrote an interpreter for it, but I have no idea why other than for the fun and instruction of doing it. [As stated in Berkeley and Bobrow], the LISP was developed on Stanford's 709/90 system, compiled there, and taken to Santa Monica as machine instructions on magnetic tape. Some fundamental code (e.g. CONS, and later the garbage collector) was done in machine language on the Q-32 itself." [Robert A. Saunders, personal communications, May 6, 2005.]

  • Robert A. Saunders. The LISP System for the Q-32 Computer. March 1964, pages 220-238 in Berkeley and Bobrow. PDF

    This paper says "Assistance was also given by D. Edwards and M. Levin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Prof. J. McCarthy and S. Russell of Stanford University. Computer time on the Stanford 7090 and PDP-1 was used in conjunction with Stanford's contract with Advanced Research Projects Agency for research in time sharing and artificial intelligence." However Saunders now says "The Stanford PDP-1 played no role whatever in the Lisp port. I am at a loss to explain any claim to the contrary. All the work was done on the
    709/90/94 system, using punched cards." Russell concurs. [Personal communications to Paul McJones, 5/16/2005]

  • Robert A. Saunders. The LISP Listing for the Q-32 Compiler, and Some Samples. March 1964, pages 290-318 in Berkeley and Bobrow. PDF
  • S.L. Kameny. Input-Output File and Library Functions: the Q-32 LISP 1.5 Mod. 2.5 System, TM-2337/102/00, 1965 September 22. NBS# 6523059. (Box 335, folder 3)
  • S.L. Kameny. LISP 1.5 Reference Manual for Q-32, TM-2337/101/00, 1965 August 9.
  • S.L. Kameny, G.P. DeFlorio, and A.H. Vorhaus. General-Purpose Display System, SP-1688, September 23, 1964. NBS# 6421245.
  • S.L. Kameny and C. Weissman. Q-32 LISP 1.5 MOD. 2.6 SYSTEM: Operating System, Input-Output, File, and Library Functions. TM-2337/103/00, 1966 April 11.

LISP 1.5 at Stanford

There was LISP 1.5 work at Stanford on the IBM 7090 or 7094. [Steele and Gabriel 1993] say "The PDP-1 Lisp at Stanford was implemented by John McCarthy and Steve Russell." However Stephen Russell says:

"I sure don't remember anything about that. ...

While I was at Stanford, I did some work on 7090 Lisp, but worked primarily on getting the PDP-1 and PDP-6 systems to run, and keeping them running. I didn't have much to do with the PDP-6 Lisp.

Since the PDP-1 system was used as a multi-user system with only 4k PDP-1 words per user, and very non-standard IO, I don't think that it ever ran PDP-1 Lisp." [Personal communication to Paul McJones, May 15, 2005]

  • Horace Enea. Clock Function for LISP 1.5. AIM-4, 2 pages, August 1963.
  • H. Enea and D. Wooldridge. Algebraic Simplication. Memo AIM-5, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, August 1963.
  • S.R. Russell. Improvements in LISP Debugging. Memo AIM-10, Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Project, December 18, 1963, 3 pages.
  • D. Wooldridge. An Algebraic Simplify Program in LISP. Memo AIM-11, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, December 1963.
  • Dean E. Wooldridge. The New LISP System (LISP 1.55). Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Project, AIM-13, February 1964, 4 pages.
  • Jan Hext. An expression input routine for LISP. Memo No. 18, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project, July 24, 1964. [Cited by Hearn 1966.]
  • Anthony Hearn. Computation of Algebraic Properties of Elementary Particle Reactions Using a Digital Computer. Communications of the ACM, Volume 9, Issue 8, August 1966, pages. 573-577. ACM DL

    This paper describes work performed in LISP on an IBM 7090. The help of Stephen Russell and Dean Wooldridge are acknowledged, along with "John McCarthy and the other members of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project".

  • Horace Enea. MLISP. Technical Report No. CS 92, Computer Science Department, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University, March 14, 1968, 18 pages pages. Online at stanford.edu

    Describes the version of the MLISP preprocessor for a LISP 1.5 system running on an IBM System/360 Model 67; see also [Smith 1969] for a version running on Stanford LISP 1.6 for the PDP-6/10.

SHARE LISP 1.5

Appendix I of Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual describes a SHARE distribution of LISP 1.5:

"The Artificial Intelligence Project at Stanford University has produced a version of LISP 1.5 to be distributed by SHARE. In the middle of February 1965 the system is complete and is available from Stanford. The system should be available from SHARE by the end of March 1965."

LISP 2

"The LISP 2 project was a collaboration of System Development Corporation and Information International Inc., and was initially planned for the Q32 computer, which was built by IBM for military purposes and which had a 48 bit word and 18 bit addresses, i.e., it was better than the IBM 7090 for an ambitious project. Unfortunately, the Q32 at SDC was never equipped with more than 48K words of this memory. When it became clear that the Q32 had too little memory, it was decided to develop the language for the IBM 360/67 and the Digital Equipment PDP-6 - SDC was acquiring the former, while III and M.I.T. and Stanford preferred the latter. The project proved more expensive than expected, the collaboration proved more difficult than expected, and so LISP 2 was dropped. From a 1970s point of view, this was regrettable, because much more money has since been spent to develop LISPs with fewer features. However, it was not then known that the dominant machine for AI research would be the PDP-10, a successor of the PDP-6. A part of the AI community, e.g. BBN and SRI made what proved to be an architectural digression in doing AI work on the SDS 940 computer." [McCarthy 1978]

Source code

  • LISP 2 system. 80 character/line, 1 inch notebook. Property of Jeff Barnett.
  • Core image generator for LISP 2. 80 character/line, 1 inch thick listing. Property of Jeff Barnett.

Documentation

Most of these items come from Stoyan. Compare with references in HOPL.

  • J. McCarthy. Storage Conventions in LISP 2, Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Project, AIM-8 (Preliminary), Stanford, Sep. 26, 1963, 5 pages.
  • Anonymous. LISP 2 Specifications Conference, Stanford University, Stanford, 1963.
  • Michael Levin. Syntax of the New Language. Memo 68, Artificial Intelligence Project and Memorandum MAC-M-158, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 29, 1964, 14 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Michael Levin. New Language Storage Conventions. Memo 69, Artificial Intelligence Project and Memorandum MAC-M-159, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 29, 1964, 8 pages. PDF at MIT
  • R.W. Mitchell. LISP 2 Specifications Proposal, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory AIM-21, Stanford, Aug. 19, 1964, 12 pages. [From McCarthy, Stoyan, Stanford]
  • Daniel G. Bobrow. The COMIT Feature in LISP 2. A I Memo 76, MAC Memo 219, LISP II Project Memo 2, February 18, 1965, 9 pages. PDF at MIT
  • S.L. Kameny and L. Hawkinson. LISP II Internal Storage Conventions. Tech Memo 1965.
  • S.L. Kameny and L. Hawkinson. LISP II Intermediate Language. Tech Memo 1965.
  • Erwin Book. The LISP 2 Syntax Translator. Tech Memo TM-2710/331/00, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, April 1966.
  • Michael Levin and Edmund Berkeley. LISP 2 PRIMER, Tech Memo TM-2710/101/00 (draft), System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, July 1966.
  • Donna Firth and S.L. Kameny. Syntax of LISP 2 Tokens. Tech Memo TM-2710/210/00, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, August 1966.
  • S.L. Kameny. LISP 2 Source Language Syntax Specifications for Syntax Translator. Tech Memo TM-2710/230/00, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, California, December 1966.
  • J.A. Barnett. SIM. An S-Expression Pattern-Matching Function. Tech Memo 1966.
  • L. Hawkinson. Technical Progress Report LISP 2 (Period Ending July 6, 1966). Information International Inc., Dec. 7, 1966.
  • M.V. Howard. Operating Instructions for the LISP 2 Supervisor in the LISP 2 Core Image. Tech Memo 1966.
  • R. A. Saunders, J.A. Barnett, Donna Firth. The LISP 2 Compiler. Tech Memo 1966.
  • Paul W. Abrahams. The Implementation of LISP 2. ??? 1967.
  • Paul Abrahams. Conventions for writing LISP 2 syntax Equations. SBC Memorandum 1967.
  • Paul W. Abrahams. LISP 2 Debugging. Tech Memo, 1967.
  • Paul W. Abrahams. LISP 2 Specifications, Systems Development Corporation Technical report TM-3417/200/00, Santa Monica, California, 1967.
  • Paul Abrahams, Donna Firth. LISP 2 Language Specifications. Tech Memo, 1967. [Same as previous item?]
  • D. Anschultz. LISP 2 Compiler Register Counter and Code Generator Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • D. Anschultz. LISP 2 Compiler Machine Link Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • Jeff Barnett. LISP 2 Compiler Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • Jeff Barnett. LISP 2 Compiler Context Resolver Language and Processor Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • D. Crandell. LISP 2 Assembly Program (LAP) Specification. Tech Memo 1967.
  • Donna Firth. LISP 2 Input/Output Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • L. Hawkinson. LISP 2 Core Image Generator (CIG) Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • L. Hawkinson. LISP 2 Internal Storage Conventions. TM-3147/550/00, 1967 April.
  • Stanley L. Kameny, Lowell Hawkinson, Clark Weissman, Jeffrey A. Barnett, Robert A. Saunders, Erwin Book, Donna Firth, Paul W. Abrahams. The Implementation of LISP 2. ??? 1967.
  • Robert E. Long. LISP 2 Storage Management Paging of Binary Programs. Tech Memo 1967.
  • P. Stygar. LISP 2 Garbage Collector Specifications. Tech Memo 1967.
  • P. Stygar. LISP 2 Storage Management : The "Growing Pain" Problem. Tech Memo 1967.

Papers

  • Paul W. Abrahams, Jeffrey A. Barnett, Erwin Book, Donna Firth, Stanley L. Kameny, Clark Weissman, Lowell Hawkinson, Michael I. Levin and Robert A. Saunders: The LISP 2 Programming Language and System, Proceedings Fall Joint Computer Conference, Volume 29, AFIPS, 1966, pages 661-676. PDF

    Revision reflecting "certain minor changes that have been made to the language since the earlier publication." Technical Memorandum TM-3163, Information International Inc. and System Development Corporation, September 26, 1966, iv+28 pages. PDF

  • Joel Weizenbaum. Review of "The LISP 2 Programming Language and System" by P.W. Abrahams et al. Review R67-22, IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers, April 1967, pages 236-238. PDF

LISP 1.5 for Univac 1108

"In the late 1960's, Eric Norman of the University of Wisconsin - Madison developed a LISP 1.5 dialect for the Univac 1100 series of mainframes ... .

The LISP system developed by Norman consisted of approximately 5,000 lines of Univac assembly language for the interpreter and about 1,000 lines or so of LISP for the compiler. Several interesting applications were developed under or ported to Univac LISP including: Planner (an early planning language designed by Carl Hewitt of MIT; MLISP (an Algol 60-like dialect of LISP); Fuzzy (a system that worked with Fuzzy Logic); and several LISP utilities such as a Pretty Print package, a Math Library, a source Editor, and a Debugger. The original source code for all of the above items -- including the full interpreter and compiler -- are contained herein and are discussed in some detail." [Jack Harper, http://www.frobenius.com/univac.htm]

"At the time, the Computing Center here at Wisconsin had decided to purchase a Univac 1108. It couldn't be delivered yet, though. What we had was a remote card reader and printer to an 1108 up in Minneapolis. Just about all the interpreter was developed that way. That is, I submitted a deck of cards at night and picked up the listings the next day. When the 1108 arrived on campus, LISP was already running on it." [Eric Norman, personal communication to Paul McJones, May 2005]

Source code and documentation

Basic PDP-1 LISP

L. Peter Deutsch developed PDP-1 LISP at M.I.T.:

"I wrote PDP-1 Lisp because I had a strong mathematical bent, I'd become intrigued with the Lisp language as a result of having somehow picked up a copy of the original Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual at MIT, and I wanted to have an interactive Lisp implementation to play with rather than having to submit card decks at the M.I.T. Computation Center. (Bear in mind that I was in high school at the time -- 1960-1964.) I'd ingratiated myself with the folks at the TX-0 (and later PDP-1) lab at M.I.T., so I had pretty free access to the machine there." [L. Peter Deutsch, quoted in lisp_doc.txt accompanying Bob Supnik's Software Kit]

  • Basic PDP-1 LISP is described in detail, including full PDP-1 assembly language source code, in this article:

LISP 1.5/1.6/MACLISP for PDP-6/10

Richard Greenblatt arrived at M.I.T. in the Fall of 1962. There was a PDP-1 in Building 26 (next door to the TX-0), a gift from DEC: serial number 3. It was available for student use, and was entirely hands on, having no operating system not dependent on manipulating the console keys. L. Peter Deutsch was a young high school student, the son of an M.I.T. professor. He wrote a LISP which ran entirely in the core memory of 4096 18-bit words. Later a drum was installed, which had 22 4096-word "fields", or 88K words altogether. Someone - Michael Wolfsburg??? - changed Deutsch's LISP to treat every memory reference as a subroutine call to a cache/drum access routine.

In 1963, DEC began the PDP-6 project with Gordon Bell as the chief engineer and Alan Kotok as the junior engineer. Kotok still spent time at the Tech Model Railroad Club, where members such as Dave Gross, Peter Samson, and Richard Greenblatt were devising efficient implementations of the various LISP SUBRs. The prototype PDP-6 took shape at the Mill, DEC's facility in Maynard, MA. The M.I.T. students would visit in the evening, bringing paper tape with assembly language source code prepared on the PDP-1 at M.I.T. They used a cross-assembler on a PDP-4. Bill Mann and Richard Greenblatt studied Deutsch's EVAL and wrote a new one for the PDP-6. Dave Gross and Greenblatt wrote PRINT. Gross and Tom Eggers went to work for DEC full time, and did some work on PDP-6 LISP. DEC sold the first PDP-6 to M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, accepting the Lab's existing 16K PDP-1 in trade as partial payment. However, the AI Lab was allowed to keep both machines for a short period.

Greenblatt returned to the AI Lab full time at that point (he had earlier been a student employee). At this point, Greenblatt, Stuart Nelson, Tom Knight and Jack Holloway resumed work on PDP-6 LISP. Then Greenblatt and Nelson decided to do a more sophisticated compiler that provided consistent variable access across the interpreter and compiler; this became MacLisp. Several years later John White took over the compiler, which became NCOMPLR. [Richard Greenblatt, as told to Paul McJones, March 15, 2005] [See also Greenblatt oral history.]

* * *

"Ideas from several other implementations influenced the initial design, notably the CTSS version on the IBM 7094, and the very minimal version for the PDP/1. However, the decision to dispense with the a-list in the implementation, a major factor in the space economy and running speed of MACLISP, came some time later. An improved compiler was written as an adjunct to the system – compilation is done 'off-line', and the resulting LAP code loaded into the system when desired." [John L. White 1970]

Source code

System

Directories with MacLISP relevance are:
LISP; -- FASL files
LSPDMP; -- Dump files
L; -- MIDAS sources for main lisp file, and for others
COMLAP; -- COMpiler (with FASLAP) and LAP assembler
LSPSRC; -- Various auxillary out-of-core files written in lisp
NILCOM; -- More LSPSRC. Mostly lisp macros, etc.
LSPMAI; -- Bug mail and other notices.
LISP20; -- Stuff for 20X MacLisp

See also Zane Healy's indexes on his DEC PDP-10 Emulation page online www.avanthar.com:

  • Bruce G. Baumgart, archivist. SAILDART Archives, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University. online
    • [MAC,LSP] MacLisp. Version adapted for SAIL WAITS timesharing system. Various dates, circa 1978. online

    • Latest entry in file LISP.ARC is "TUESDAY SEPT 14,1976 FM+6D.1H.33M.7S. LISP 1211 -GLS,JONL-". File LISP. is timestamped and copyright 1978. File READ.ME ends with"For other questions contact RPG [Richard P. Gabriel]."

    "In 1976 the MIT version of MacLisp was ported to the WAITS operating system by Richard Gabriel at the Stanford AI Laboratory (SAIL), which was directed at that time by John McCarthy." [Steele and Gabriel 1993]

  • Phil Budne. Source files and text documents. Online at ftp.ultimate.com
    • These items were obtained from a TOPS-20 system at XKL.com:
      • MACLISP LISP sources including COMPLR.LSP lisp.tar.gz
      • MACLISP .DOC and .MID files including LISP-NEWS.DOC from April 28, 1981. lisp2.tar.gz
    • These items were obtained from tape images of Chemistry Department disk packs from the Stevens Tech TOPS-10 timesharing system:
      • MIDAS sources for building MACLISP version 804 and MIDAS. Circa June 1979. maclsp804.tar.gz
      • MACLISP version 861 (no additional MIDAS files) and Maclisp Reference Manual, March 3, 1979. maclsp861.tar.gz

Applications

  • Terry Winograd. SHRDLU. Online at hci.stanford.edu
    "SHRDLU is a program for understanding natural language, written by Terry Winograd at the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1968-70. SHRDLU carried on a simple dialog (via teletype) with a user, about a small world of objects (the BLOCKS world) shown on an early display screen (DEC-340 attached to a PDP-6 computer)."

Documentation

  • William A. Martin. PDP-6 LISP Input-Output for the Dataphone. Memo 79, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-241, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1, 1965, 6 pages. PDF at MIT

    "Abstract: A version of LISP 1.5 for the PDP-6 Computer has been extended to include IO through the dataphone. This makes possible communication between programs running in Project MAC time sharing and LISP programs running on the PDP-6. The method of handling input-output for the dataphone is similar to that for the typewriter, paper tape punch, and paper tape reader. Three useful LISP functions are presented as examples of dataphone programming.'

  • William A. Martin. PDP-6 LISP Input-Output for the Display. Memo 80, Artificial Intelligence Project, Memorandum MAC-M-242, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 28, 1965, 22 pages. PDF at MIT

    "Abstract: An intermediate level language for display programming has been embedded in LISP 1.5. The language is intended as a basis for higher level display languages and includes facilities for both generation and analysis of display information. ..."

  • Peter Samson. PDP-6 LISP. Artificial Intelligence Memo 98, Project MAC Memo MAC-M-313, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 16, 1966, 11 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This is a mosaic description of PDP-6 LISP, intended for readers familiar with the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual or who have used LISP on some other computer. Some of the newer features (e.g., the display) are experimental and subject to change; in such respects this should not be regarded as a final document."

  • Anonymous. PDP-6 LISP (LISP 1.6) Revised. A.I. Memo No. 116A, Project MAC, April 1967, 23 pages, (corrected edition of Memo 116, January 1967). PDF at MIT

    • "This is a mosaic description of PDP-6 LISP, intended for readers familiar with the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual or who have used LISP on some other computer. Many of the features, such as the display, are subject to change. Thus, consult a PDP-6 systems programmer for any differences which may exist between LISP of Oct. 14, 1966 and present LISP on the system tape."

    [Steele and Gabriel 1993] note: "The report does not bear the author's name, but Jeffrey P. Golden [Golden 1970] attributes it to Jon L White."

  • Roland Silver. Incorporating MIDAS Routines into PDP6 LISP. Systems Program Memo, Artificial Intelligence Memo 127, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1967, 6 pages. PDF at MIT

    "Some PDP6 LISP users have felt a need for a way to incorporate MIDAS subroutines into LISP. LISP has been changed to let you do this, using files found on the LISP SYSTEM microtape."

  • Roland Silver. LISP Linkage Feature: Incorporating MIDAS Routines into PDP6 LISP. Systems Program Memo, Artificial Intelligence Memo 127A, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 1967, 5 pages (corrected edition of Memo 127, March 1967). PDF at MIT
  • John L. White. Additions to LAP. Artificial Intelligence Memo 132, Program Memo, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 4 pages, July 1967. PDF at MIT
  • John L. White. Matrix Inversion in LISP. Artificial Intelligence Memo 136, PDP-6 Program Memo, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 1967, 2 pages. PDF at MIT

    "Very soon there will appear on the vision library tape a file named @IAS which is a collection of compiled SUBR's for performing general matrix row reduction and inversion."

  • Jon L. White. PDP-6 LAP. Artificial Intelligence Project Memo 152, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1968, 10 pages. PDF at MIT
  • John White. Time-Sharing LISP for the PDP-6. Artificial Intelligence Memo 157, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1968, 17 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This Memo. written in the style and convention of A.I. memo. No. 116A, may be considered an addendum thereto. It should prove to be a welcome updating on the LISP system.

  • Donald Eastlake III. ITS 1.4 Reference Manual. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 161, MAC-M-377, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1968, 83 pages. PDF at MIT

    ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) was the operating system on which MacLisp was developed.

  • D. Eastlake, R. Greenblatt, J. Holloway, T. Knight, S. Nelson. ITS 1.5 Reference Manual. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 161A, MAC-M-377, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 1969, 180 pages. PDF at MIT Reconstructed text at sigfs.org
  • Thomas O. Binford. Display Functions in LISP. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 182, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1970, 18 pages. PDF at MIT
  • John L. White. An Interim LISP User's Guide. Artificial Intelligence Memo No. 190, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1970, 87 pages. PDF at MIT

    "The substance of this memo is to initiate the naïve LISP user into the intricacies of the system at the Project MAC A.I. Lab. ... At some undetermined time in the future a comprehensive document will be issued, consisting of an elementary introduction to LISP, a self-primer, the core of this document, and numerous reference appendices. The comprehensive guide will then replace A.I. memos numbers 116A, 152, 157, the LISP Progress Report, this memo and all informal notes and communications."

    The Notation section says "'MACLISP' refers to the PDP/6 implementation of the programming language LISP in use at the Artificial Intelligence Group of Project MAC."

  • Jeffrey P. Golden. A User's Guide to the A. I. Group LISCOM Lisp Compiler: Interim Report. Memo No. 210, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 1970. PDF at MIT CSAIL
  • David A. Moon, David P. Reed, and Ira Goldstein, Guy L. Steele, Alexander Sunguroff. LISP/MACLISP Reference Manual. Rough draft #9905, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1973. MACLSP.DBA [UP,DOC] at www.saildart.org
  • David A. Moon. MacLISP Reference Manual, Revision 0. Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 1974.
  • Anonymous. MACLISP Reference Manual, March 6, 1976. LISP INFO file from MIT TECO EMACS Version 170. Online at pdp-10.trailing-edge.com
    • "This file is a fast edit of the MACLISP Reference Manual Dated March 6, 1976, so expect stuff to be out of date and to refer to non-existent page numbers. See other notes under Sources."

    From the same release: MACLISP-COMMANDS INFO file. Online at pdp-10.trailing-edge.com

  • MacLISP information from ITS AI:.INFO at www.avanthar.com
  • JonL White [JONL], Eric Rosen [ECR], Richard M. Stallman [RMS], Guy L. Steele [GLS], Howard I. Cannon [HIC], Bob Kerns [RWK]. LISP NEWS. MacLisp release notes.

    "This file contains in reverse chronological order the modifications to Maclisp over the years. Astute readers can find programming hints and obscure documentation here."

  • Anonymous. Maclisp Reference Manual, March 3, 1979. Online at www.avanthar.com
  • K. M. Pitman. The Revised MacLisp Manual.
    • "Saturday Morning Edition", M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-295, June 1, 1983.

      "Abstract [from www.multicians.org bibliography]: MACLISP is a dialect of Lisp developed at M.I.T.'s Project MAC (now the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science) and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory for use in artificial intelligence research and related fields. Maclisp is descended from Lisp 1.5, and many recent important dialects (for example Lisp Machine Lisp and NIL) have evolved from Maclisp. David Moon's original document on Maclisp, The Maclisp Reference Manual (alias the Moonual ) provided in-depth coverage of a number of areas of the Maclisp world. Some parts of that document, however, were never completed (most notably a description of Maclisp's I/O system); other parts are no longer accurate due to changes that have occurred in the language over time. This manual includes some introductory information about Lisp, but is not intended as tutorial. It is intended primarily as a reference manual; particularly, it comes in response to user's please for more up-to-date documentation. Much text has been borrowed directly from the Moonual, but there has been a shift in emphasis. While the Moonual went into greater depth on some issues, this manual attempts to offer more in the way of examples and style notes. Also, since Moon had worked on the Multics implementation, the Moonual offered more detail about compatibility between ITS and Multics Maclisp. While it is hoped that Multics users will still find the information contained herein to be useful, this manual focuses more on the ITS and TOPS-20 implementations since those were the implementations most familiar to the author."

    • "Sunday Morning Edition", December 16, 2007. Online at www.maclisp.info

Papers

  • Joel Moses. The Function of FUNCTION in LISP or Why the FUNARG Problem Should be Called the Environment Problem. AI-199, MAC-M-428, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1970, 15 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Richard J. Fateman. Reply to an editorial. ACM SIGSAM Bulletin, Issue 25, March 1973, pages 9-11. ACM DL

    "This reports the results of a test in which a compiled MacLisp floating-point program was faster than equivalent Fortran code. The numerical portion of the code was identical and McLisp used a faster subroutine-call protocol." [Steele and Gabriel 1993]

  • Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Data Representations in PDP-10 MacLISP. AI Memo 420, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1977, 13 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Fast Arithmetic in MacLISP. AI Memo 421, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1977, 11 pages. PDF at MIT

    "This paper was presented at the MACSYMA Users Conference, Berkeley, California, July 1977."

  • Jon L. White. LISP: Program is Data: A Historical Perspective on MacLISP. Proceedings of the 1977 MACSYMA Users' Conference. NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office (Washington, D.C., July 1977), 181-189.

Applications

  • Adolfo Guzmán. Decomposition of a Visual Scene into Bodies. Artificial Intelligence Memo 139, Project MAC Memorandum MAC-M-357, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1967, 47 pages. PDF at MIT

    "A shorter but improved version of this memorandum has been published: 6. Guzmán, A. Decomposition into Three-Dimensional Bodies. AFIPS Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference. Thompson Book Co., Washington, D.C."

  • Stephen Smoliar. EUTERPE-LISP: A LISP System with Music Output. Artificial Intelligence Memo 141, Project MAC, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1967, 16 pages. PDF at MIT
  • Richard Bogen, Jeffrey Golden, Michael Genesereth, and Alexander Doohovskoy. MACSYMA Reference Manual. The MATHLAB Group, Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Version 9, Second Printing, December 1977, v+308+x pages. PDF at bitsavers.org

BBN LISP

Apparently the first LISP at Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc. was based on L. Peter Deutsch's Basic PDP-1 LISP:

"... my PDP-1 Lisp implementation, as you probably know, was extensively rewritten at BB&N to become the conceptual predecessor of BBN-Lisp, which in turn engendered Interlisp" [L. Peter Deutsch, quoted in lisp_doc.txt accompanying Bob Supnik's Software Kit]

"There was a LISP system running on the PDP-1 at BBN, and I had converted it to use a software paging system that I had developed earlier at MIT." [Dan Murphy in Origins and Development of TOPS-20]

Source code

  • Dan Murphy had an extensive archive of old sources for BBN LISP (and many other things including TENEX, TELCOMP, and TECO), but the disk pack containing them fell victim to an overzealous sysadmin in 1987. He still has a set of files in LISP and PDP-10 assembly language. (Personal communication, 10 March 2005.)
  • Section 4 of Bobrow et al. 1966 below gives the source code for all the standard functions implemented in LISP.

Documentation

  • Daniel G. Bobrow, D. Lucille Darley, Daniel L. Murphy, Cynthia Solomon, and Warren Teitelman. The BBN-LISP System. Scientific Report No. 1., Project No. 8668, Contract No. AF19(628)-5065, BBN Report 1346, Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 1966, 82 pages. PDF

    This report describes the LISP system for a PDP-1 with 8392 18-bit words of 5 microsecond core memory and 92,312 words on a drum with an average access time of 16.5 milliseconds. It describes the internal structure including paging and binding techniques. Section III defines all the standard functions; Section IV gives the source code of all the standard functions implemented in LISP.

  • Daniel G. Bobrow [and Daniel L. Murphy]. Preliminary Specification for BBN 940 LISP. [Bolt., Beranek and Newman Inc.,] October 13, 1966, 16 pages. PDF
  • W. Teitelman, D. G. Bobrow, A. K. Hartley, and D. L. Murphy. BBN-LISP: TENEX Reference Manual. Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 1971. PDF
  • W. Teitelman, D. G. Bobrow, A. K. Hartley, and D. L. Murphy. BBN-LISP: TENEX Reference Manual. Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, first revision, February 1972.
  • W. Teitelman, D. G. Bobrow, A. K. Hartley, and D. L. Murphy. BBN-LISP: TENEX Reference Manual. Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, second revision, August 1972. PDF at bitsaver.org

Papers

  • Daniel G. Bobrow and Daniel L. Murphy. Structure of a LISP system using two-level storage. Communications of the ACM, Volume 10, Issue 3, March 1967, pages 155-159. ACM DL

    "Abstract: In an ideal list-processing system there would be enough core memory to contain all the data and programs. Described in this paper are a number of techniques that have been used to build a LISP system utilizing a drum for its principal storage medium, with a surprisingly low time penalty for use of this slow storage device. The techniques include careful segmentation of system programs, allocation of virtual memory to allow address arithmetic for type determination, and a special algorithm for building reasonably linearized lists. A scheme for binding variables is described which is good in this environment and allows for complete compatibility between compiled and interpreted programs with no special declarations."

    Describes BBN LISP on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 with a core memory of 16K 18-bit words (5 microseconds access time) and a drum memory of 88K words (17 milliseconds average access time).

  • Daniel G. Bobrow and Daniel L. Murphy. A note on the efficiency of a LISP computation in a paged machine. Communications of the ACM, Volume 11 , Issue 8, August 1968, pages 558, 560. ACM DL

    "Abstract: The problem of the use of two levels of storage for programs is explored in the context of a LISP system which uses core memory as a buffer for a large virtual memory stored on a drum. Details of timing are given for one particular problem."

    Discusses BBN LISP on the SDS 940, which had 16K of 24-bit core memory and 1M words of drum memory (17 milliseconds average access time).

  • Dan Murphy. TENEX and TOPS-20 Papers. Online at www.opost.com/dlm/tenex

    TENEX and TOPS-20 were popular operating systems for running LISP. See especially Origins and Development of TOPS-20 for extensive background on the PDP-6, PDP-10, LISP, and more.

INTERLISP

INTERLISP Reference Manual

See also: Interlisp-D.

Source code

  • Thomas C. Rindfleisch, archivist. System dumps, SUMEX-AIM.

    Rindfleish notes: "This version of Interlisp should be both TENEX and TOPS20 compatible. It came at a time when lots of work was going on to port Interlisp to other environments, including the VAX and the new personal Lisp machines (Dolphins, etc.). This means little was changing in the TENEX/TOPS20 version." Rindfleisch also has tape images containing various .sav files created from these files.

    • Partial contents of <lisp> directory from a system dump, January 31, 1982. .zip
    • Contents of <lisp> directory from final full dump, February 25, 1983. Also contains lisp.mac.829 from the <lisp> directory from the January 31, 1982 dump. .zip
    • Contents of <lispusers> directory from final full dump, February 25, 1983. .zip
    • Contents of <helpsys> directory from final full dump, February 25, 1983. .zip
  • SDF Public Access UNIX System, archivist. Contents of TWENEX.ORG Interlisp directories, retrieved by Larry Masinter, August 18, 2006.

    Masinter notes: "The TWENEX files seem to have come from Sumex, or at least, there are a lot of sumex-specific files there. The file dates are 1984, the latest seems to be 7-Dec-84. I used 'type a' FTP for the source files and 'type I' retrieval for the binary files, since the PDP-10 is a 9-bit-byte / 36-bit-word machine."

      • Contents of <lisp> directory. .zip
      • Contents of <lispusers> directory. .zip

Documentation

  • Raymond Bates, David Dyer, Andrea Ignatowski, Johannes Koomen, Steven Saunders, and Donald Voreck. Interlisp-VAX Users Manual. Interlisp-VAX Project, USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, California, December 5, 1982, 57 pages. PDF

Papers

  • Warren Teitelman. PILOT: a Step Toward Man-Computer Symbiosis. Ph.D. Thesis. MIT-AI-TR-221, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1966. PDF at MIT

    "Interlisp (and BBN-Lisp before it) introduced many radical ideas into Lisp programming style and methodology. The most visible of these ideas are embodied in programming tools, such as the spelling corrector, the file package, DWIM, CLISP, the structure editor, and MASTERSCOPE.

    The origins of these ideas can be found in Warren Teitelman's PhD dissertation on man-computer symbiosis. In particular, it contains the roots of structure editing (as opposed to "text" or "tape" editing, breakpointing, advice, and CLISP." [Steele and Gabriel 1993]

  • Warren Teitelman. Automated programmering - the programmer's assistant. Proceedings of the Fall Joint Computer Conference, AFIPS, December 1972, pages 915-921. PDF
  • Warren Teitelman. CLISP - Conversational LISP. Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University, California, 1973, pages 686-690. PDF
  • Daniel G. Bobrow and Ben Wegbreit. A model and stack implementation of multiple environments. Communications of the ACM, Volume 16 , Issue 10, October 1973, pages 591-603. ACM DL

    "One of the most innovative of the language extensions introduced by Interlisp was the spaghetti stack. The problem of retention (by closures) of the dynamic function-definition environment in the presence of special variables was never completely solved until spaghetti stacks were invented." [Steele and Gabriel 1993]

  • Warren Teitelman. INTERLISP. ACM SIGART Bulletin, Issue 43, December 1973, pages 8-9. ACM DL
  • Warren Teitelman. INTERLISP Documentation. ACM SIGART Newsletter, Issue 44, February 1974, page 10. ACM DL
  • D.G. Bobrow. A Note on Hash Linking. Communications of the ACM, Volume 18, Number 7, July 1975, pages 413-415. ACM DL
  • W. Teitelman and L. Masinter. The Interlisp programming environment. IEEE Computer, Volume 14, Number 4, April 1981, pages 25-34.
  • Larry M. Masinter. Interlisp-VAX: A Report. Report No. SUN-CS-81-879 (also numbered: HPP-81-14), Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, August 1981. PDF online at stanford.edu
  • Raymond L. Bates, David Dyer, and Johannes A.G.M. Koomen. Implementation of Interlisp on the VAX. Proceedings of the 1982 ACM symposium on LISP and functional programming, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, 1982, pages 81-87. ACM DL

Stanford LISP 1.6

"When Stanford received a PDP-6 [the original MacLISP developed at M.I.T.] was converted to run under the DEC monitor; several modifications and embellishments were performed and this LISP became LISP 1.6, also known as Stanford LISP. Stanford LISP was exported to the Irvine campus of the University of California becoming UCI LISP; at Irvine it was further modified and enhanced, receiving the editing and debugging packages of a different LISP strain called BBN LISP; BBN LISP soon became known as InterLISP. [John Allen, The TLC-LISP Documentation, The Lisp Company,1980]

"At Stanford in the 1960's, an early version of MacLisp was adapted to the PDP-6; this Lisp was called Lisp 1.6. The early adaptation was rewritten by John Allen and Lynn Quam; later compiler improvements were made by Whit Diffie. UCI Lisp was an extended version of Lisp 1.6 in which an Interlisp style editor and other programming environment improvements were made. UCI Lisp was used by some folks at Stanford during the early to mid-1970's, as well as at other institutions. In 1976 the MIT version of MacLisp was ported to the WAITS operating system by Richard Gabriel at the Stanford AI Laboratory (SAIL), which was directed at that time by John McCarthy. This dialect supplanted the Lisp 1.6 derivatives, including UCI Lisp. At the Heuristic Programming Project, under the direction of Edward Feigenbaum, Interlisp was the primary dialect. Cordell Green's automatic programming group (PSI) used Interlisp via remote login to a PDP-10 at Information Science Institute (ISI) in southern California." [Steele and Gabriel 1993]

Apparently there was a port to the IBM 360/370.

Source code

  • Bruce G. Baumgart, archivist. SAILDART Archives, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University. online
    • [LSP,LSP] Whitfield Diffie? Contains various versions of xxx online
    • [CMP,LSP] Whitfield Diffie? Compiler development directory? Contains various versions of the Stanford (COMPLR. and COMPLR.NEW) and Rutgers (ILISPC.RUT) compiler source, plus bug reports and email from Rick LeFaivre (Rutgers) to Whit Diffie. Also contains several versions of "A Brief Description of the Stanford Lisp Compiler", apparently by Diffie (CDOC, COMPLR.NOT) online
    • [LSP,SYS] Lynn H. Quam and Whitfield Diffie et al. Stanford Lisp 1.6. Various dates, circa June 1973. online

      Files READ.ME and VITAL.MSG contain this note: "THIS AREA CONTAINS STANFORD LISP 1.6, NOT THE UCI ILISP SYSTEM WHICH IS NOW ON [UCI,SYS]."

    • [UCI,SYS] University of California at Irvine (UCI) version of Stanford Lisp 1.6. Various dates, circa 1973. online

      • File DI4JUN lists a larger collection of files (including more source code) with [Project,ProgrammerNumber] of [UCI,WD], where WD is apparently Whitfield Diffie.

    • [RUT,LSP] Rutgers University version of UCI version of Stanford Lisp 1.6. Various dates, circa 1978. online
      File READ.ME contains "Files on this directory are on LISP UDP May 11, 1980 - rpg. The directory [RUT,LSP] contains the Rutgers University Lisp system. This is a modification of ILISP produced by Eric Lefaivre@Rutgers-10. Many bugs in the compiler have been reparied and many new features added to other parts of the system. These are explained in ILISP.MAN[RUT,LSP]. Whit Diffie WD@SAI