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What was the first LISP not created by John McCarthy?

Please correct me if I am wrong but I understand that John McCarthy was involved with first versions of LISP, but variations of the language were created starting with 1.5.

My question is what was the first non-McCarthy version of LISP?

Solution

  • Well, technically, McCarthy didn't actually create LISP, the way we know it. McCarthy created a formalism for reasoning about programs, that looked a fair amount like LISP, but not exactly. Steve "Slug" Russell realized that it would not be difficult to implement that formalism in a computer program on the IBM 704, and did so.

    It was a bug in that original program that gave us the traditional formatting of LISP lists. The code was supposed to display

    (A, B, C)

    and a bug caused it to display

    (A B C)

    instead. Everyone who saw it liked the comma-less form better, and the bug became a feature.

    The names CAR and CDR came directly from the IBM 704 architecture.