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Symbolics 3600 Dead

Symbolics 3600
KindMachine
Introduced1983
Discontinued1988
StatusDead
ManufacturerSymbolics
ClassWorkstation
PlatformLisp machine
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗

The Lisp machine at its peak — hardware-accelerated dynamic typing, tagged memory, Genera on top. When generic Unix boxes got fast enough to run Lisp, the reason to exist ended.

Created by Symbolics

Symbolics' 3600 (1983) was the production Lisp machine — tagged-memory hardware executing Lisp primitives natively, Genera OS (a windowed environment fully in Lisp), Zmacs, Zmail.

The most advanced development environment ever sold, at $100,000+. When RISC workstations got fast enough to run Franz Lisp and Lucid, the special hardware lost its reason; Symbolics filed Chapter 11 in 1993.

Sources

  1. bitsavers.org/pdf/symbolics/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolics