{"id":590,"date":"2012-08-29T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T03:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/?p=590"},"modified":"2024-05-08T19:57:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T02:57:09","slug":"50th-anniversary-of-lisp-1-5-programmers-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2012\/08\/29\/590\/","title":{"rendered":"50th Anniversary of LISP 1.5 Programmer’s Manual<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\nI just noticed that August 17 was the 50th anniversary of the LISP 1.5 Programmer’s Manual<\/em><\/a> by John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart, and Michael I. Levin. On that day in 1962 it was published as a bound report of the Computation Center and Research Laboratory of Electronics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was also published by MIT Press<\/a> — perhaps simultaneously — and is still in print. A second edition was released in 1965; the only difference that I see comparing tables of contents is the addition of Appendix I: LISP for SHARE distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was of course the first book on LISP. It is a reference manual rather than a textbook, but many people managed to learn LISP from it, and a number of people managed to implement LISP from it. Today ACM’s Digital Library lists<\/a> 327 citations for it, and Google lists<\/a> about 23,900 hits. I’m pleased to say that #1 on Google is the authorized PDF<\/a> at my History of LISP archive<\/a> at the Computer History Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the generosity of several people, the History of LISP archive includes not only the book but also several versions of the underlying source code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n