LISP 1.5
for the Univac 1100 Mainframe
The original LISP programming system -- LISP 1.5 -- was first developed by John McCarthy et. al. on the IBM 709/7090 at MIT in the late 1950's. This first LISP system was used for early Artificial Intelligence work such as theorem proving, symbolic calculus, electrical network design and analysis, natural language understanding, and many others.
In the late 1960's, Eric Norman of the University of Wisconsin - Madison developed a LISP 1.5 dialect for the Univac 1100 series of mainframes (see John Walker's page for an interesting description of the architecture and use of the Univac series and John Dvorak's page for an interesting history of Sperry-Rand, the developer of the 1100 family).
The LISP system developed by Norman consisted of approximately 5,000 lines of Univac assembly language for the interpreter and about 1,000 lines or so of LISP for the compiler. Several interesting applications were developed under or ported to Univac LISP including: Planner (an early planning language designed by Carl Hewitt of MIT; MLISP (an Algol 60-like dialect of LISP); Fuzzy (a system that worked with Fuzzy Logic); and several LISP utilities such as a Pretty Print package, a Math Library, a source Editor, and a Debugger. The original source code for all of the above items -- including the full interpreter and compiler -- are contained herein and are discussed in some detail.
This web page attempts to document some of the characteristics of this early LISP system and is part of the overall Ancient LISP web page that is under perpetual construction by the author. The Ancient LISP page is intended to be focused on the original IBM 7090 LISP -- therefore, this page is fairly cursory but is included in order to document an important historical artifact -- namely, the Univac LISP system.
Univac 1100 LISP System Details
Univac 1100 Basic Characteristics
| Classification: | Third-Generation Mainframe. Transistorized with Plated Wire Memory |
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| Internal Memory: | 36-bit Words. 131,000 Words in Two Banks |
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| Addressing: | ... |
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| Integer Representation: | One's Complement |
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| General Registers: | ... |
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| Index Registers: | ... |
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| Speed in Microseconds: | ... |
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| Mass Storage: | Fastrand drum - xxxx 36-bit Words. |
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| Program Input: | Punched Cards with very limited TeleType Access |
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| Physical Size: | Approximately 400 square feet of floor space - Typical Computer Room was about 1,000 square feet or so |
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Univac 1100 Snapshots
Univac 1100 Hardware Architecture
Univac 1100 Assembly Language
http://www.frobenius.com/univac.htm -- Last Revision: 21 January 2006
Copyright © 1998 - 2020 Jack Harper (unless otherwise noted)
1107 Panel (81Kb - Courtesy of XXXXX)
1107 Panel with neon lights (39Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)
1108 System View (161Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)
1108 System View (16Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)
1110 System View (26Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)
1100 Console View (88Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)
1100 System View -- Room Sized (42Kb Courtesy of XXXXX)