Lisp machines are general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software and programming language, usually via hardware support. They are an example of a high-level language computer architecture, and in a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations.

1. <architecture> Any machine (whether notional or actual) whose instruction set is Lisp. 2. <hardware, operating system> A line of workstations made by Symbolics, Inc. from the mid-1970s (having grown out of the MIT AI Lab) to late 1980s. All system code for Symbolics Lisp Machines was written in Lisp Machine Lisp. Symbolics Lisp Machines were also notable for having had space-cadet keyboards. [More details and historical background?] {Lisp Machinemoeller/symbolics-info/symbolics.html">Lisp Machine Museum (http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/Lisp Machinemoeller/symbolics-info/symbolics.html)}. (2003-07-03)

<language> An extension of Maclisp, now called Zetalisp. (1998-12-13)

<language> The Maclisp dialect used on the LISP Machine. The many extensions to Maclisp include vectors, closures, flavors, stack groups, locatives, and {invisible pointers}. Currently supported by Lisp Machines, Inc. and Symbolics. ["LISP Machine Manual", D. Weinreb and D. Moon, MIT AI Lab, 1981]. (1997-03-18)

The second version of Lisp, successor to LISP 1. Developed at MIT in 1959. Followed by LISP 1.75, LISP 1.9, Lisp 2 and many other versions.

BBN LISP (also stylized BBN-Lisp) was a dialect of the Lisp programming language by Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lots of Isolated Silly Parentheses (Reference: LISP, slang)

(StarLISP) A data-parallel extension of Common LISP for the Connection Machine, uses "pvars". {A *LISP simulator (ftp://think.com/public/starsim-f19-sharfile)}. E-mail: <customer-support@think.com>, <documentation-order@think.com>. [Cliff Lasser, Jeff Mincy, J.P. Massar, Thinking Machines Corporation "The Essential *LISP Manual", TM Corp 1986]. [Jargon File]

(lisps, lisping, lisped)

<language> LISt Processing language. (Or mythically "Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses"). Artificial Intelligence's mother tongue, a symbolic, functional, recursive language based on the ideas of lambda-calculus, variable-length lists and trees as fundamental data types and the interpretation of code as data and vice-versa. Data objects in Lisp are lists and atoms. Lists may contain lists and atoms. Atoms are either numbers or symbols. Programs in Lisp are themselves lists of symbols which can be treated as data. Most implementations of Lisp allow functions with side-effects but there is a core of Lisp which is purely functional. All Lisp functions and programs are expressions that return values; this, together with the high memory use of Lisp, gave rise to Alan Perlis's famous quip (itself a take on an Oscar Wilde quote) that "Lisp programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing". The original version was LISP 1, invented by John McCarthy <jmc@sail.stanford.edu> at MIT in the late 1950s. Lisp is actually older than any other high level language still in use except Fortran. Accordingly, it has undergone considerable change over the years. Modern variants are quite different in detail. The dominant HLL among hackers until the early 1980s, Lisp now shares the throne with C. See languages of choice. One significant application for Lisp has been as a proof by example that most newer languages, such as COBOL and Ada, are full of unnecessary crocks. When the Right Thing has already been done once, there is no justification for bogosity in newer languages. See also Association of Lisp Users, Common Lisp, {Franz Lisp}, MacLisp, Portable Standard Lisp, Interlisp, Scheme, ELisp, Kamin's interpreters. [Jargon File] (1995-04-16)