Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine
A workstation built to run the Lisp programming language, sold from 1983 for artificial intelligence research.
Symbolics was founded in 1980 by people from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to sell Lisp machines, computers designed to run Lisp programs efficiently. The 3600 series, introduced in 1983, used a tagged architecture that let hardware check data types as programs ran.
The machines ran an operating system and environment called Genera, written largely in Lisp. Customers used them for research in artificial intelligence, computer graphics and animation. They were expensive, and cheaper general-purpose workstations overtook them in the late 1980s. Symbolics registered symbolics.com in March 1985, the first .com domain name.
Why it matters
The 3600 showed what a programming environment built around one language could be. Ideas from Genera, such as interactive debugging and rich object systems, influenced later software.
Key facts
- Introduced in 1983.
- Ran Genera, written in Lisp.
- Used tagged architecture.
- Symbolics registered the first .com domain in 1985.
Sources
- Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray, et al. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. 3rd ed. Westview Press, 2013.
- Moon, David A. "Architecture of the Symbolics 3600." Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 1985.
- Computer History Museum online collection catalog (computerhistory.org/collections).