<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Larry Masinter <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:masinter@adobe.com" target="_blank">masinter@adobe.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p>Nigel, could you say more about where your list came from? "Smalltalk for B5700" for example: Smalltalk without the interactive environment isn't really "Smalltalk", and "Ada for Symbolics" likely a federal purchasing mandate, rather than a useful (or used)
system.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>My list (from my website) is based on personal curiosity and implementations that I judge to be special and worth preserving [1]. An analogy I like to use is that for the history of painting it is possible to tour many fine galleries and see the unbroken sweep of history in the changing styles and technologies, pretty well back to the dawn of man. Contrast with the increasingly patchy history of software artefacts (covering a mere fraction of the span of time) and I suggest it will become impossible (or at the very least increasingly difficult) to establish a coherent history of ideas across the spectrum of early computing. My list is not exclusive, as I learn more about a particular system, platform or domain I find new things all the time that I would like to find out about and see if the original implementation and toolchain can be found. The hit-rate for recovery is very low (perhaps 5%?) and so it also helps to have plenty of candidates to chase to keep one's enthusiasm buoyed.</div><div><br></div><div>Smalltalk for the B5700 - at least by the description was definitely interactive (click the link to see the manual that describes how to interact with the session).</div><div><br></div><div>Ada for Symbolics - to me a perfect intersection of several of my favorite technologies: Symbolics, Genera, LISP, Ada and compiler implementation. I'd be delighted to inspect and play with the implementation. How was it implemented? who made it? what was the code-generator? did it fully implement Ada? did it use Genera IPC? how were the tasking primitives implemented? so many questions.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>[1] There is a parallel aim to preserve as much of the Burroughs legacy as we can manage to find and digitise. I would suggest that our group of Burroughs enthusiasts want to see the legacy of Burroughs properly represented in the annals of history. On that basis anything related to Burroughs is a candidate so we can ultimately have the most complete picture possible.</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br></div></div>