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PDP-10 / its

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WOODS #1388

Open larsbrinkhoff opened 5 years ago

larsbrinkhoff commented 5 years ago

WOODS; TS WOODS
And more...

What is this? @ams?

ams commented 5 years ago 
    WOODS;      The Woods Lunar rock program
larsbrinkhoff commented 5 years ago

I think this is something else!

ams commented 5 years ago

Dunno, -READ-.-THIS- says:

Alan created this directory to retrieve the LUNAR program into.
ams commented 5 years ago

Rocks and Lunars are mentioned. I think we just don't know the definition of what "Lunar rock" means in this context!

larsbrinkhoff commented 5 years ago

I see "volcanic", "basalt", "apollo11".

ams commented 5 years ago

Olivine, and Brecchia are rock types. So seems to be a program to do analysis of samples of lunar rocks?

larsbrinkhoff commented 5 years ago

Yes. Have fun!

ams commented 5 years ago

Using some kind of Eliza like natural language processing, you get back a form that can be used to process a set of samples:

**(list the samples that contain olivine)***
[...]
(DO (FOR EVERY X1 / (SEQ SAMPLES) : (CONTAIN X1 (NPR* X3 / (QUOTE OLIV)) (QUOTE NIL)) ; (PRINTOUT X1)))

What a weird little program!

ams commented 5 years ago

Notes about WOODS:

Another problem with the PDP-10 Lisp implementations is the small address space of the PDP-10 processor. Many Lisp systems, such as MACSYMA and Woods's LUNAR program, have difficulty running in an 18-bit address space.

As a demonstration of the system, and a test of its capabilities, two large programs have been brought over from the PDP-10. William Woods's LUNAR English-language data-base query system was converted from InterLisp to Maclisp, thence to Lisp machine Lisp. On the Lisp machine it runs approximately 3 times as fast as in Maclisp on the KA-10, which in turn is 2 to 4 times as fast as in InterLisp. Note that the Lisp machine time is elapsed real time, while the PDP-10 times are virtual run times as given by the operating system and do not include the delays due to timesharing.

LUNAR (including the dictionary) and Macsyma can reside together in the Lisp machine with plenty of room left over; either program alone will not entirely fit in a PDP-10 address space.

Woods paper on LUNAR is titled: The Lunar Sciences Natural Language Information System: Final Report: LUNARReport1972.pdf

larsbrinkhoff commented 5 years ago

Good find! So apparently this was ported to Maclisp.

There's a teletype transcript that shows that TENEX 1.28 was current in April 1972.