A hand-drawn timeline from the 1950s to 1975 with three scenes: 1958 Lisp, a programmer at a large computer with tape drives; 1968 APL, a programmer at a typewriter terminal; 1970 Forth, a radio telescope dish in an observatory

Three languages I keep coming back to are APL, Forth and Lisp. I have now added an interactive timeline beside my live demos of each: the language’s history from the 1950s on, with my own versions marked where they belong. Each timeline is a horizontal strip, about eleven years to a view. Scroll sideways to go earlier or later.

Resource Link
APL sw-apl, sw-apl-workspaces
Forth sw-cor24-forth, reva-fork
Lisp sw-cor24-macrolisp
3D models console-3D, s1130-3D
The series Throwback Thursday: every post
Comments Discord

APL Timeline

The APL timeline's opening view, 1970 to 1980: APL\360 with domino, my A'70 live demo; APLSV; the IBM 5100, my B'75 live demo; SHARP APL; the 1977 APL standard; APL80 on the TRS-80, coming soon
Part of the APL timeline. Click to enlarge.

A timeline of APL is now the front page of my APL site. It has 40 entries and opens on 1970. Iverson’s notation and APL\360 are to the left; to the right are APLSV, SHARP APL, the standard, the IBM PC and APL2, and on to my own array languages.

My live demos sit on it as eras: A‘70, APL\360 typed on a 2741; B‘75, APLSV on the IBM 5100; and, just added as the third, C‘80, APL-80 on the TRS-80. Next, soon, is D‘83, IBM PC APL. APL\1130 in 1968, on the 1130’s console typewriter, is marked as a future demo. Clicking a live entry opens that demo.

Forth Timeline

The Forth timeline's opening view: Forth on the IBM 1130, ca. 1968, a future demo; Forth at NRAO; FORTH, Inc.; the Forth Interest Group; Forth-79
Part of the Forth timeline. Click to enlarge.

A timeline of Forth sits beside my browser Forth for COR24. It has 27 entries and also opens on 1970. Chuck Moore’s FORTH took shape on an IBM 1130 at Mohasco, around 1968, and was named, five letters, by 1970. Then come Forth at the NRAO radio telescope, FORTH, Inc. in 1973, the Forth Interest Group and fig-Forth in 1978, and Forth-79.

My Forths are on it too: COR24 Forth, proto-forth-wasm, Forth in SWTOS and reva-fork. Forth on the IBM 1130 is marked as a future demo.

Lisp Timeline

The Lisp timeline's opening view, 1957 to 1968: FORTRAN, ALGOL, Lisp at MIT, COBOL, McCarthy's 1960 paper, the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, Maclisp, BBN-LISP
Part of the Lisp timeline. Click to enlarge.

A timeline of Lisp sits beside my browser Lisp for COR24, with 43 entries. It opens earlier than the other two, at Lisp’s beginning: John McCarthy at MIT in 1958 and his 1960 paper, then the LISP 1.5 Programmer’s Manual, Maclisp, BBN-LISP and on.

Its 1130 entry is Lisp 1.6 on the IBM 1130, from 1972, by Guy L. Steele Jr. at Boston Latin School, marked as a future demo. My Tiny Macro Lisp on COR24 is live; Lisp in SWTOS is still to come.

My APLs, Forths and Lisps

Language Repository Live demo
APL sw-apl: a clean-room APL in Rust, and sw-apl-workspaces sw-apl: A‘70, B‘75 and C‘80
APL sw-cor24-apl: APL for COR24, in C web-sw-cor24-apl
Forth sw-cor24-forth: a tiny Forth for COR24 web-sw-cor24-forth
Forth sw-fth-wasm: proto-forth-wasm, a proto-Forth workbench sw-fth-wasm
Forth reva-fork: Reva Forth on 64-bit hosts and WebAssembly Reva in the browser
Lisp sw-cor24-macrolisp: Tiny Macro Lisp for COR24 web-sw-cor24-macrolisp

The COR24 versions are also gathered on the COR24 demos page.

Next: the IBM 1130

A 3D render of the IBM 1130: the 1131 CPU desk console with its lights panel, the 1053 console printer and keyboard, and the blue-doored cabinet beside it
s1130-3D model. Click to enlarge.

All three timelines point at the same machine. APL\1130, Forth and Lisp 1.6 all ran on the IBM 1130, and each is marked as a future demo.

My IBM 1130 emulator (TBT #5) has an assembler game, the console panel, an 029 keypunch and the console printer so far, but no disk yet. Work is planned to complete it and run, if possible, actual APL, Forth and Lisp code written for the 1130.

It will also draw on my 3D models, console-3D for the 1053 console printer and s1130-3D for the 1131 console, to animate the console, keypunch, printer, disk and the rest. The goal is to update the Computer History Museum on my research campus.

Closing

A block print of a Sipeed Tang FPGA board: a row of header pins, the FPGA chip under a TANG label, USB connectors and capacitors
Primer FPGA. Click to enlarge.

Recently I’ve been attending user groups for APL and for Forth, and I belong to a Lisp meetup group. I’m working toward improving my 1130 emulator so that it can run actual APL, Forth and Lisp. Once that works, I plan to create an FPGA version of the 1130.

I’m following the approach I took with makerlisp.com’s COR24-TB FPGA development board, for which I wrote an emulator. This time I’m starting with the emulator, and then creating my own FPGA design, using X_eTaL-fpga, as I did for HEX1000, two hex calculators loosely based on TI’s 4-bit TMS1000 calculator chip, one with a UART interface (live demo) and the other with physical buttons and LED digits (hardware).