History of LISP

ABSTRACT

This paper concentrates on the development of the basic ideas and distinguishes two periods - Summer 1958 through Summer 1958 when most of the key ideas were developed (some of which were implemented in the FORTRAN based FLPL), and Fall 1958 through 1962 when the programming language was implemented and applied to problems of artificial intelligence. After 1962, the development of LISP became multi-stranded, and different ideas were pursued in different places.

REFERENCES

• 1: Abrahams, Paul W. (1963), Machine verification of mathematical proof, thesis, MIT Computation Center, Cambridge, Mass.
• 2: Abrahams, Paul W., Barnett, J., et al., (1966), "The LISP 2 Programming Language and System", Proceedings of the Fall Joint Computer Conference, pp. 661-676.
• 3: Abrahams, Paul W. (1967), LISP 2 Specifications, Systems Development Corporation Technical report TM-3417/200/00, Santa Monica, Calif.
• 4: John Allen, Anatomy of LISP, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, NY, 1978
• 5: Berkeley, Edmund C. and Daniel Bobrow, eds. (1964), The Programming Language LISP, its Operation and Applications, Information International Incorporated, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (out of print).
• 6: Burstall, R.M., J.S. Collins and R.J. Popplestone (1968),The POP-2 Papers, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland.
• 7: Burstall, R.M., J.S. Collins and R.J. Popplestone (1971), Programming in POP-2. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland.
• 8: Cartwright, Robert (1976), A practical formal semantic definition and verification system for typed LISP, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory technical report AIM-296, Stanford, California.
• 9: Cartwright, Robert and John McCarthy (1978) "Representation of Recursive Programs in First Order Logic" (to be published). (Draft available as FIRST NEW{W77,JMC} at SU-AI on ARPAnet).
• 10: George E. Collins, A method for overlapping and erasure of lists, Communications of the ACM, v.3 n.12, p.655-657, Dec. 1960 [doi>10.1145/367487.367501]
• 11: Church, Alonzo (1941), Calculi of Lambda conversion, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
• 12: Fox, Phyllis (1960) LISP 1 Programmers Manual, Internal paper, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 13: Gordon, Michael (1973) Models of Pure LISP, Experimental Programming Reports: No. 31, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
• 14: H. Gelernter , J. R. Hansen , C. L. Gerberich, A Fortran-Compiled List-Processing Language, Journal of the ACM (JACM), v.7 n.2, p.87-101, April 1960 [doi>10.1145/321021.321022]
• 15: Hearn, Anthony (1967), REDUCE, a User-oriented Interactive System for Algebraic Simplification, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory technical report AIM-57, Stanford, California.
• 16: Hewitt, Carl (1971), Description and theoretical analysis (using schemata) of PLANNER: a language for proving theorems and manipulating models in a robot, Ph.D. Thesis, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 17: McCarthy, John (1958) "Programs with common sense", Proceedings of the Symposium on the Mechanization of Thought Processes, National Physiology Lab, Teddington, England.
• 18: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1959a), Quarterly Progress Report No. 52, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 19: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1959b), Quarterly Progress Report No. 55, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 20: McCarthy, John (1959c), Letter to the Editor, CACM, Vol. 2, No. 8.
• 21: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1960a), Quarterly Progress Report No. 56, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 22: John McCarthy, Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I, Communications of the ACM, v.3 n.4, p.184-195, April 1960 [doi>10.1145/367177.367199]
• 23: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1962a), Quarterly Progress Report, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 24: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1962b), Quarterly Progress Report No. 64, Research Lab of Electronic, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 25: John McCarthy, LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, The MIT Press, 1962
• 26: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1963a), Quarterly Progress Report No. 68, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 27: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1963b), Quarterly Progress Report No. 69, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 28: McCarthy, John (1963c) "A Basis for a Mathematical Theory of Computation", in P. Braffort and D. Hirschberg (eds.), Computer Programming and Formal Systems, pp. 33-70. North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam.
• 29: McCarthy, John (1963d) "Towards a Mathematical Science of Computation", Proceedings of IFIP Congress, Munich 1962, Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 21-28.
• 30: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1965), Quarterly Progress Report No. 76, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 31: McCarthy, J., Minsky, M., et al., (1966), Quarterly Progress Report No. 80, Research Lab of Electronics, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 32: McCarthy, John and Carolyn Talcott (1979) LISP with Proofs, to be published. Versions of most chapters are available at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
• 33: Marti, J. B., Hearn, A. C., Griss, M. L. and Griss, C. (1978) Standard LISP Report, University of Utah Symbolic Computation Group Report No 60, Provo, Utah.
• 34: The Mathlab Group (1977), MACSYMA Reference Manual, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT Version 9, Cambridge, Mass.
• 35: Mitchell, R,W. (1964) LISP 2 Specifications Proposal, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Memo No. 21, Stanford, Calif.
• 36: Moon, David A. (1974), MACLISP Reference Manual, Project MAC Technical Report, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
• 37: Joel Moses, The Function of FUNCTION in LISP, or Why the FUNARG Problem Should be Called the Environment Problem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1970
• 38: Newell, A., and J.C. Shaw (1957)"Programming the Logic Theory Machine", Proceedings of the 1957 Western Joint Computer Conference, IRE.
• 39: Rulifson, J. et al. (1968), "QA4 - A Language for Writing Problem-Solving Programs", Proceeding IFIP 1968 Congress, TA-2, pp 111-115.
• 40: Stoyan, Herbert. Herbert Stoyan of Dresden, DDR has completed several chapters on the history of LISP.
• 41: Gerald Sussman , Terry Winograd, Micro-Planner Reference Manual, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1970
• 42: Teitelman, Warren (1975), INTERLISP: Interlisp Reference Manual, Xerox PARC Technical Report, Palo Alto, Calif.
• 43: Weisman, Clark (1967), LISP 1.5 Primer, Dickenson Press.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: LISP

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.1 SYMBOLIC AND ALGEBRAIC MANIPULATION
      I.1.1 Expressions and Their Representation
          Subjects: Simplification of expressions

General Terms:
Languages, Performance