Background · Lisp machines

Timeline

The Lisp machines, Symbolics, Genera and the VLM, from the MIT Lisp Machine project to Genera on the bare hardware of a laptop. The VLM tells the story; the road map shows the steps ahead.

From the MIT Lisp Machine to bare metal

  1. 1973Richard Greenblatt and Thomas Knight begin the Lisp Machine project at the MIT AI Lab; its first machine is CONS.1
  2. 1977The LISP Machine Progress Report, MIT AI Memo 444.1
  3. 1978–79The CADR, shown at an AI conference at MIT in 1978 and funded by DARPA; about 25 are built.1,5
  4. 1979Greenblatt founds Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI).4
  5. 1980Symbolics is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 9 April, with Russell Noftsker as its first CEO; in October it licenses the MIT Lisp Machine software.2,6
  6. 1981Symbolics LM-2, a repackaged CADR.2,15
  7. 1983Symbolics 3600, with a 36-bit tagged word. Texas Instruments licenses LMI's design for the TI Explorer.2,7,4
  8. 19843640 and 3670. The Symbolics software becomes Genera (1984–86, by source).2,3
  9. 1985symbolics.com, registered on 15 March, is the first .com domain. Release 6.0 brings the Document Examiner. 3645 and 3675.14,3,2
  10. 1986Genera 7, with Dynamic Windows. 3610, 3620 and 3650.3,2
  11. 1987Ivory, a 40-bit tagged Lisp microprocessor. LMI goes bankrupt.8,4
  12. 1988XL400 workstation; MacIvory, Ivory on a board for the Macintosh.2
  13. 1989UX400, Ivory on a board for Sun workstations; MacIvory II.2
  14. 1990XL1200 and UX1200. Genera 8.0, for the 3600 and Ivory machines, with CLOS.2,3
  15. 1991Genera 8.1, with CLIM; MacIvory III.3,2
  16. 1992NXP1000. The graphics division goes to Nichimen Graphics.2
  17. 1993Open Genera 1.0: the VLM, an Ivory emulator, on DEC Alpha. Genera 8.3 on CD-ROM. Symbolics files for Chapter 11 in January.3,11,9,10
  18. 1995The court approves the sale of Symbolics' assets and name.10
  19. 1998–2000Open Genera 2.0, several Genera instances on one Alpha.3,11
  20. c. 2007Brad Parker's unofficial port of the VLM to x86-64 Linux.13,3
  21. 2009symbolics.com is sold.14
  22. 2021Portable Genera 2.0: the VLM for x86-64 and Arm64, on Linux and macOS.3,12
  23. 2024Portable Genera 2.0.6, 17 August.3
  24. 2026-10-14Genera on Bare Metal: implementation of the runtime begins on a ThinkPad T490s (status).
  25. 2026-10-15Genera runs on the bare T490s as a UEFI application, with no operating system underneath (status).
  26. 2026-10-15Genera runs on the runtime's own drivers, with the firmware's boot services ended (status).

Sources differ on some years: the CADR dates from 1977 to 1979, the name Genera from 1984 to 1986, Open Genera 2.0 from 1998 to around 2000. The timeline gives the common year or the range.

Sources

  1. Lisp machine, Wikipedia.
  2. Symbolics, Wikipedia.
  3. Genera (operating system), Wikipedia.
  4. Lisp Machines (LMI), Wikipedia.
  5. The MIT CADR FAQ, unlambda.com.
  6. Symbolics, LM-2 product announcement and MIT Lisp Machine license press release, 1980, bitsavers.
  7. Symbolics, 3600 Technical Summary, February 1983, bitsavers.
  8. C. Baker et al., The Symbolics Ivory processor: a 40 bit tagged architecture Lisp microprocessor, IEEE ICCD 1987.
  9. Symbolics, Genera 8 release notes and Open Genera documentation, bitsavers.
  10. Symbolics bankruptcy filed and Symbolics assets bought, smbx.org.
  11. History, Symbolics Technologies.
  12. Genera, Symbolics Technologies.
  13. VLM on Linux, CLiki.
  14. 25 years later, first registered domain name changes hands, TechCrunch, 2009.
  15. Lisp machines, Computer History Museum.