Máquina LISP
LISP Machine
The LISP (LISt Processing) language was developed for symbolic expression computation by John McCarthy, the Father of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in 1958. The first interpreter, which evaluated LISP expressions, was implemented on an IBM 704 using punched cards in 1959. In 1962, the first complete compiler, already featuring "garbage collection," was implemented.
In the 1960s and 1970s, AI programs required computational power—in terms of both time and memory—that was inadequate for the existing hardware. Since LISP was the most widely used language, in 1973, Richard Greenblatt and Thomas Knight at MIT began building a computer whose native programming language was LISP, to efficiently develop and execute large AI programs. The first machine was called CONS (one of the list construction operators in LISP), and the improved version was CADR (a LISP pun). These machines had an architecture based on a high-level language.
LISP machines, the first commercial single-user workstations, were pioneers in laser printing, windowing systems, mouse usage, and high-resolution raster bitmap graphics. They were also used in computer graphics for modeling, animation, and processing medical, 3D, and CAD images.
This LISP machine was used for research in automated reasoning. In 1988, it cost approximately 24,000 contos (~€120,000). In Portugal, there are only five such machines: three at IST and two at SISCOG.