4 ms·

They were among the first graphical workstations: Large bitmap screen, disks, network, color option, mouse, window system, object-oriented software, fonts, gui

by lispm 2y ago

They were among the first graphical workstations: Large bitmap screen, disks, network, color option, mouse, window system, object-oriented software, fonts, gui framework, ... Before the Apple Lisa, the SUN-1, the Mac, ... These are Lisp Machine images/screen shots from MIT from 1980: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/symbolics/LM-2/LM_Screen_Shots_Jun1980.pdf https://bitsavers.org/pdf/symbolics/LM-2/LM_Screen_Shots_Jun... * a dual screen machine with a electronics design system * Macsyma with plots * Inspector, Window Debugger, Font Editor * Music notation * first tiled screen/window manager * another electronic CAD tool The UI was developed using Flavors, the object-oriented system for the Lisp Machine (message passing, classes&objects, multiple inheritance, mixins, ...).

Brian_K_White 2y ago
But unrelated. Merely another machine from the same time.
- lispm 2y ago
  Like the PERQ is largely unrelated to the Smalltalk / Interlisp-D systems from Xerox, to LISA or the early Mac. It is somewhat related to the later NeXT (founded 1985, first release in 1988) -> Mach/Unix, ... The PERQ was just in the timeline between the Alto and the LISA/Mac. But there isn't much of a relationship to the latter two and not much to the Alto. The Alto was used to write stuff like its OS in BCPL, the Office software written in Mesa, Smalltalk, Interlisp, ... but AFAIK no UNIX and no PASCAL system. The PERQ did not run Alto-Software. Background information about the PERQ history: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/perq/RD_Davis/Davis-PERQ_Workstations_Nov03.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/perq/RD_Dav...
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Also lots of influences, all the stuff Smalltalk influenced, Mesa influenced Modula-2, Cedar influenced Oberon and Modula-3. Followed by all the languages, those ones influenced as well.
    - lispm 2y ago
      And all that is independent of the PERQ. The article states (and it makes sense) that the PERQ had influence on the modern Mac, the Macs running Mac OS X and later. Since NeXT and then Apple used UNIX on a Mach Kernel, the latter came as a direct influence from CMU. Influence on the LISA or the early Mac (before Mac OS X)? Not so much..., those were influenced directly from Xerox PARC ideas, people and technology. Related to PERQ: The SPICE project from CMU, using PERQs, was also developing SPICE Lisp, which was influenced by the LISP stuff from MIT, including an EMACS variant, influenced by the ZWEI editor from the Lisp Machine. SPICE Lisp from the PERQ, evolved into CMU CL and later SBCL.
      - kragen 2y ago
        i'd be surprised if the lisa folks had no knowledge of the perq. i mean it was exhibited at trade shows, wasn't it?
        lispm 2y ago
        Probably. They may have seen such a machine. But both the LISA and the Mac were very different from UI, Software and Hardware. Steve Jobs vision was eventually to get to the Dynabook (-> MacBook, iPad). LISA and the early Mac were stepping stones... But the Xerox PARC -> Apple route is broad and is well documented. Steve Jobs got a demo of the secret Xerox stuff in exchange of some Apple stock, including the Smalltalk system (though the Smalltalk team were less then happy about it). He hired Larry Tesler. Apple was also one of the selected companies getting Smalltalk-80 access and ported it to their machines (later the Apple sources were open sourced). Steve was also interested in the office domain, desktop publishing was one of the first applications of the Mac (incl. Postscript, the Laserwriter, Adobe Pagemaker, ...).
        kragen 2y ago
        i would rather say that steve jobs's vision was to make the dynabook impossible; the central feature of the dynabook is that it is a tool for computational thinking for the masses, while the central feature of most of the designs of the projects jobs led (mac 128, imac, ipod, iphone, ipad—though not next) is that they're closed to the users, requiring special tools to open and modify that are only available to a chosen elite, and nowadays, even to write software for. it's a vision of society that sees it primarily as a market for products, not a community of intellectual collaboration or autonomous individual flourishing, which was the intent of the dynabook the story of smalltalk at apple is fairly complex apple did also implement smalltalk-80 on the lisa, and there's a screenshot of that in the smalltalk-80 book (01984), but it was apparently never released, even as proprietary software. apple shipped a macintosh smalltalk in august 01985 (according to http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2010/3/6_Smalltalk-80.html http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...) but i don't think squeak (the apple smalltalk that eventually became open-source) was derived from it alan kay didn't join apple until 01984 (the year after jobs hired sculley as ceo), jobs left in september 01985, and squeak wasn't announced until 01996, which is about the time kay left, and i think squeak as a whole departed for disney at that point. jobs came back in 01997, and though he didn't kill squeak, he did kill hypercard, the other main environment for individual computational autonomy. jobs's apple did eventually make squeak open-source—in 02006! jecel assumpçao in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392074 explains that the reason for finally open sourcing squeak a decade after the project ended was that olpc (itself fairly locked down, though less so than iphones) demanded it. also, though, he does heavily imply that it descended from the original apple smalltalk
- kragen 2y ago
  i don't think they were unrelated; the groups developing them were in constant contact and had thick webs of mutual acquaintances. teitelman had grown up at mit before going off to parc to write interlisp, and parc was full of former arpa researchers i do think they made noticeably (and fascinatingly) different choices not only in what they designed for their user interfaces but also what they thought of as a good user interface other lispm-related links, other than the one lispm posted above: https://github.com/lisper/cpus-caddr https://github.com/lisper/cpus-caddr #Lisp machine #gateware for the MIT CADR in modern #Verilog. “Boots and runs.” By #lisper (Brad Parker) https://metebalci.com/blog/cadr-lisp-machine-and-cadr-processor/ https://metebalci.com/blog/cadr-lisp-machine-and-cadr-proces... #CADR #Lisp-machine #retrocomputing at some point i came across a treasure trove of lispm screenshots showing many aspects of the genera ui, but apparently it's not in my bookmarks file one quibble: i don't think flavors was around until quite a bit later, maybe 01979, so the lispm software wasn't oo until quite late. weinreb and moon's aim-602 on it wasn't until 01980: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA095523.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA095523.pdf and of the five keywords they chose to describe it, one was 'smalltalk'
  - lispm 2y ago
    > i do think they made noticeably (and fascinatingly) different choices not only in what they designed for their user interfaces but also what they thought of as a good user interface Though software written originally for the Xerox Interlisp systems got ported to the MIT Lisp Machine descendants, since the hardware was more capable with more memory. For example Intellicorp KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment) was ported. It retained much of its original UI (which included extensive graphics features and an interface builder), when running on Symbolics Genera. It looks like one is using an Xerox Interlisp UI when running it on a Symbolics. https://vimeo.com/909417132 https://vimeo.com/909417132 For example at 08:30 the screen looks like an Interlisp system, even though it is Symbolics Genera. Xerox PARC also had real MIT CADRs in their network. I remember seeing a photo, with an office, where the Xerox PARC employee had both an Interlisp workstation and (IIRC) a Symbolics. There is also a video for the IJCAI 81 (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence), with demos of an Interlisp system and a MIT Lisp Machine, both demos recorded at Xerox PARC.

by lispm 2y ago

Brian_K_White 2y ago

But unrelated. Merely another machine from the same time.

lispm 2y ago
Like the PERQ is largely unrelated to the Smalltalk / Interlisp-D systems from Xerox, to LISA or the early Mac. It is somewhat related to the later NeXT (founded 1985, first release in 1988) -> Mach/Unix, ... The PERQ was just in the timeline between the Alto and the LISA/Mac. But there isn't much of a relationship to the latter two and not much to the Alto. The Alto was used to write stuff like its OS in BCPL, the Office software written in Mesa, Smalltalk, Interlisp, ... but AFAIK no UNIX and no PASCAL system. The PERQ did not run Alto-Software. Background information about the PERQ history: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/perq/RD_Davis/Davis-PERQ_Workstations_Nov03.pdf http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/perq/RD_Dav...
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Also lots of influences, all the stuff Smalltalk influenced, Mesa influenced Modula-2, Cedar influenced Oberon and Modula-3. Followed by all the languages, those ones influenced as well.
  - lispm 2y ago
    And all that is independent of the PERQ. The article states (and it makes sense) that the PERQ had influence on the modern Mac, the Macs running Mac OS X and later. Since NeXT and then Apple used UNIX on a Mach Kernel, the latter came as a direct influence from CMU. Influence on the LISA or the early Mac (before Mac OS X)? Not so much..., those were influenced directly from Xerox PARC ideas, people and technology. Related to PERQ: The SPICE project from CMU, using PERQs, was also developing SPICE Lisp, which was influenced by the LISP stuff from MIT, including an EMACS variant, influenced by the ZWEI editor from the Lisp Machine. SPICE Lisp from the PERQ, evolved into CMU CL and later SBCL.
    - kragen 2y ago
      i'd be surprised if the lisa folks had no knowledge of the perq. i mean it was exhibited at trade shows, wasn't it?
      - lispm 2y ago
        Probably. They may have seen such a machine. But both the LISA and the Mac were very different from UI, Software and Hardware. Steve Jobs vision was eventually to get to the Dynabook (-> MacBook, iPad). LISA and the early Mac were stepping stones... But the Xerox PARC -> Apple route is broad and is well documented. Steve Jobs got a demo of the secret Xerox stuff in exchange of some Apple stock, including the Smalltalk system (though the Smalltalk team were less then happy about it). He hired Larry Tesler. Apple was also one of the selected companies getting Smalltalk-80 access and ported it to their machines (later the Apple sources were open sourced). Steve was also interested in the office domain, desktop publishing was one of the first applications of the Mac (incl. Postscript, the Laserwriter, Adobe Pagemaker, ...).
        kragen 2y ago
        i would rather say that steve jobs's vision was to make the dynabook impossible; the central feature of the dynabook is that it is a tool for computational thinking for the masses, while the central feature of most of the designs of the projects jobs led (mac 128, imac, ipod, iphone, ipad—though not next) is that they're closed to the users, requiring special tools to open and modify that are only available to a chosen elite, and nowadays, even to write software for. it's a vision of society that sees it primarily as a market for products, not a community of intellectual collaboration or autonomous individual flourishing, which was the intent of the dynabook the story of smalltalk at apple is fairly complex apple did also implement smalltalk-80 on the lisa, and there's a screenshot of that in the smalltalk-80 book (01984), but it was apparently never released, even as proprietary software. apple shipped a macintosh smalltalk in august 01985 (according to http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2010/3/6_Smalltalk-80.html http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...) but i don't think squeak (the apple smalltalk that eventually became open-source) was derived from it alan kay didn't join apple until 01984 (the year after jobs hired sculley as ceo), jobs left in september 01985, and squeak wasn't announced until 01996, which is about the time kay left, and i think squeak as a whole departed for disney at that point. jobs came back in 01997, and though he didn't kill squeak, he did kill hypercard, the other main environment for individual computational autonomy. jobs's apple did eventually make squeak open-source—in 02006! jecel assumpçao in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23392074 explains that the reason for finally open sourcing squeak a decade after the project ended was that olpc (itself fairly locked down, though less so than iphones) demanded it. also, though, he does heavily imply that it descended from the original apple smalltalk
kragen 2y ago
i don't think they were unrelated; the groups developing them were in constant contact and had thick webs of mutual acquaintances. teitelman had grown up at mit before going off to parc to write interlisp, and parc was full of former arpa researchers i do think they made noticeably (and fascinatingly) different choices not only in what they designed for their user interfaces but also what they thought of as a good user interface other lispm-related links, other than the one lispm posted above: https://github.com/lisper/cpus-caddr https://github.com/lisper/cpus-caddr #Lisp machine #gateware for the MIT CADR in modern #Verilog. “Boots and runs.” By #lisper (Brad Parker) https://metebalci.com/blog/cadr-lisp-machine-and-cadr-processor/ https://metebalci.com/blog/cadr-lisp-machine-and-cadr-proces... #CADR #Lisp-machine #retrocomputing at some point i came across a treasure trove of lispm screenshots showing many aspects of the genera ui, but apparently it's not in my bookmarks file one quibble: i don't think flavors was around until quite a bit later, maybe 01979, so the lispm software wasn't oo until quite late. weinreb and moon's aim-602 on it wasn't until 01980: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA095523.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA095523.pdf and of the five keywords they chose to describe it, one was 'smalltalk'
- lispm 2y ago
  > i do think they made noticeably (and fascinatingly) different choices not only in what they designed for their user interfaces but also what they thought of as a good user interface Though software written originally for the Xerox Interlisp systems got ported to the MIT Lisp Machine descendants, since the hardware was more capable with more memory. For example Intellicorp KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment) was ported. It retained much of its original UI (which included extensive graphics features and an interface builder), when running on Symbolics Genera. It looks like one is using an Xerox Interlisp UI when running it on a Symbolics. https://vimeo.com/909417132 https://vimeo.com/909417132 For example at 08:30 the screen looks like an Interlisp system, even though it is Symbolics Genera. Xerox PARC also had real MIT CADRs in their network. I remember seeing a photo, with an office, where the Xerox PARC employee had both an Interlisp workstation and (IIRC) a Symbolics. There is also a video for the IJCAI 81 (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence), with demos of an Interlisp system and a MIT Lisp Machine, both demos recorded at Xerox PARC.