Jon L. White collection on Common Lisp
Finding aid prepared by Bo Doub, Kim Hayden, and Sara Chabino Lott
Processing of this collection was made possible through generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered
through the Council on Library and Information Resources' Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant.
Computer History Museum
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA, 94043
(650) 810-1010
research@computerhistory.org
March 2017
Title: Jon L. White collection
Identifier/Call Number: X6823.2013
Contributing Institution:
Computer History Museum
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
8.75 Linear feet,
7 record cartons
Date (bulk): Bulk, 1978-1995
Date (inclusive): 1963-2012
Abstract: The Jon L. White collection on Common Lisp contains material relating to the development and standardization of the programming
language Common Lisp and, more generally, the Lisp family of programming languages. Records date from 1963 to 2012, with the
bulk of the material ranging from 1978 to 1995, when White was working at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Xerox
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), Lucid, and Harlequin Group. Throughout many of these positions, White was serving on the
X3J13 Committee to formalize a Common Lisp standard, which aimed to combine and standardize many previous dialects of Lisp.
This collection consists of conference proceedings, manuals, X3J13 Committee correspondence and meeting minutes, notebooks,
technical papers, and periodicals documenting White’s work in all of these roles. Other dialects of Lisp--especially MAClisp--are
also major focuses of the collection. White also collected significant amounts of material on object-oriented programming,
artificial intelligence, garbage collection memory management, and floating-point arithmetic in his various computer programming
roles.
Languages: The collection is predominantly in English, with some French and Japanese.
creator:
Jon L., White
Access Restrictions
The collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
The Computer History Museum (CHM) can only claim physical ownership of the collection. Users are responsible for satisfying
any claims of the copyright holder. Requests for copying and permission to publish, quote, or reproduce any portion of the
Computer History Museum’s collection must be obtained jointly from both the copyright holder (if applicable) and the Computer
History Museum as owner of the material.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of Item], [Date], Jon L. White collection on Common Lisp, Lot X6823.2013, Box [#], Folder [#], Catalog [#],
Computer History Museum.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Jon L. White, 2012.
Biographical/Historical Note
Jon L. White was involved in the development of the programming language Common Lisp, a standardized and enhanced version
of MIT’s MAClisp, both of which are dialects of Lisp. He also chaired Lisp conferences, edited Lisp periodicals, and sat on
the board of the Association of Lisp Users. In addition to his contributions to Lisp development, White was also involved
with compilers, garbage collection, and higher-level memory management. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from
Carnegie-Mellon University and a master’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University.
Lisp was first implemented in 1958 at MIT and was frequently used for artificial intelligence research purposes. In the late
1960s, MIT’s Project MAC developed the Lisp dialect MAClisp. White joined MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1969,
where he began developing Lisp systems and compilers. He led the later development of MAClisp, wrote and maintained the MAClisp
compiler, and led the creation of NIL, an implementation of Lisp that ran on stock hardware as opposed to Lisp-specific machines.
In 1977, White took a one-year leave of absence from MIT to work on Lisp/370 at IBM's Watson Research Center.
By 1980, there were many discrete dialects of Lisp, and a committee was convened to develop one standardized successor dialect.
White was on this committee, and the group ultimately developed Common Lisp. White was also involved with X3J13, the technical
committee formed in 1986 to standardize Common Lisp under the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). He was the chair
of the X3J13 Iteration Subcommittee, which standardized Common Lisp’s Loop and Iterate macros.
White left MIT in the early 1980s to work on product development for another Lisp dialect, Interlisp, at Xerox PARC. In 1985,
he joined Lucid to develop Common Lisp systems, and then worked on Lisp projects at Harlequin. After Harlequin, White worked
briefly for NASA Ames Research Center, and then at CommerceOne.
Scope and Content of the Collection
The Jon L. White collection on Common Lisp contains material collected and created by White during his work with the programming
language, Lisp, and one of its most widely used dialects, Common Lisp. The records span 1963 through 2012 with the bulk of
the collection ranging from 1978 to 1995. One focus of the collection is the X3J13 Committee’s work in standardizing Common
Lisp under ANSI. This collection holds X3J13’s meeting minutes, correspondence between members, presentation material, drafts
of papers, and voting ballots on committee issues -- with a specific focus on the Iteration Subcommittee. Books, manuals,
and technical reports documenting Common Lisp and the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) supplement the material relating to
X3J13. Other records in this collection relate to the Lisp family of programming languages more generally, with conference
proceedings, academic technical papers, and other publications documenting the development and use of Lisp and its dialects
(other than Common Lisp). Much of this part of the collection came out of MIT’s Project MAC and the MIT Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. Material of interest in the MIT material relate to MAClisp, Lisp programming for the PDP-6, SCHEME, and LAMBDA.
The last part of this collection covers other topics relating to programming, such as object-oriented programming, garbage
collection memory management, artificial intelligence, floating-point arithmetic, standardization, and compilers. Object-oriented
programming is an especially prevalent topic, with significant amounts of material from ACM’s OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming,
Systems, Languages & Applications) Conference and the periodical OOPS Messenger published by ACM’s SIGPLAN.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged into 3 series:
Series 1, Common Lisp records, 1980-2012, bulk 1985-1995
Series 2, Lisp records, 1963-2001, bulk 1978-1994
Series 3, Object-oriented programming, artificial intelligence, and other records, 1972-2001
Related Collections at CHM
Herbert Stoyan collection on LISP programming, Lot X5687.2010.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
COMMON LISP (Computer program language)
Computer programming
Garbage collection (Computer science)
Object-oriented programming (Computer science)
Common Lisp records, Series 1,
Bulk, 1985-1995
1980-2012
Series Scope and Content
This series consists of material collected and/or created by White relating to the development and use of the programming
language, Common Lisp. Types of records in this series include manuals, correspondence, notebooks, meeting minutes, technical
reports, and conference proceedings. One significant focus of this series is the X3J13 Committee, which formed in 1986 to
develop and formalize the ANSI Common Lisp standard. This series holds X3J13’s meeting minutes, correspondence between members,
presentation material, drafts of papers, and voting ballots--and discussions of their results--on committee issues. White
served as chair of X3J13’s Iteration Subcommittee, which standardized Common Lisp’s Loop and Iterate macros. This series contains
correspondence, presentation slides, and technical papers from the Iteration Subcommittee on the development of Loop and Iterate.
Many of the manuals in this series were published by Lucid, Inc. and Harlequin Group and provide instruction for using instances
of Common Lisp compatible with systems from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple Computer. The Common Lisp Object
System (CLOS), Common Lisp’s facility for object-oriented programming, is also well-documented in this series. One other highlight
of this series is material relating to the funding of one of White’s projects by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). The proposal for this project was titled “An Integrated Lisp-C/C++ Environment” and aimed to co-develop a C++ (and/or
C) compiler and debugger along with extending Common Lisp’s Foreign Language Interface. This series is arranged chronologically.
102773988
X3J13 Committee correspondence, presentation slides, and technical papers on Loop and Iterate
macros
1980; 1987-1988
102773989
Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) workshop material
1983; 1988-1991; 2012
102773990
Guy Steele corrections and clarifications for Common Lisp : the Language
1985
102773991
Richard C. Waters writings on Loops and Common Lisp
1985-1989
102773993
X3J13 Committee task groups and Cleanup Committee meeting minutes
1986-1989
102773992
X3J13 Committee reference documents and correspondence
1986-1994
102773994
A programmer's guide to Common Lisp
1987
102773995
Sun Common Lisp version 2.1 manual and release notes
1987-08
102774006
Tao reference manual
1987-08
102773996
X3J13 Committee drafts of papers and presentations on Common Lisp Object System (CLOS)
1987-1990
102773997
Implementing primitive datatypes for higher-level languages
1988
102773999
Common Lisp
1989
102773571
Golden Common Lisp : a hands-on approach
1989
102773998
SunTechnology : the journal for Sun users
1989
102774001
Programming in CLOS and Lucid Common Lisp course material
1989-1990
102774002
HP Common Lisp advanced user's guide
1990
102774003
Lucid Common Lisp/HP guides
1990
102774004
Visualization and graphical layout in object-oriented systems
1990
102774005
The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) and Delivery Tool Kit (DTK)
1990-09
102774007
Lucid Common Lisp/Sun versions 3.0 and 4.0 guides
1990-1991
102774008
Understanding CLOS : the Common Lisp Object System
1991
102774009
An overview of YY and YYonX : a CLOS based window tool kit and its implementation
1991-02-25
102774010
X3J13 Committee notebook
1991-1992
102774012
Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) 2.0 manual and release notes
1992
102774013
Straight talk about Lisp : a special report for the technical community
1992
102774014
DARPA funding for BAA 92-13 project
1992-1993
102774011
Lucid Common Lisp applications guides
1992-1993
102774000
Object-oriented programming : the CLOS perspective
1993
102774015
Persistent CLOS : user guide/reference manual version 1.20
1993-12
102774016
Lucid Common Lisp advanced user's guide
ca. 1993
102774017
LispWorks edition 3.2 manuals
1994
102774018
Lucid accounts receivable portfolio and Creditor's Committee correspondence
1994-1995
102774019
Lucid Common Lisp/SPARC Solaris manual
1995-04
102774020
Liquid Common Lisp : release and installation notes version 5.0
1997-06
102774021
LispWorks version 4.1 manuals
1998
102774022
Harlequin Common Lisp ORB : developing component software with CORBA
1999-01
102774023
Franz Developer Symposium proceedings
2001-03
Lisp records, Series 2,
Bulk, 1978-1994
1963-2001
Series Scope and Content
This series contains records related to the programming language Lisp. Material dates from 1963 to 2001, with the bulk from
1978 to 1994, and includes conference proceedings, technical papers and reports from several universities, manuals, standards,
books, and periodicals. There is quite a bit of material on the development of Lisp and MAClisp at MIT’s Project MAC laboratories,
including papers written by White, and numerous AI Memos from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Specific Project
MAC topics include Lisp storage and garbage collection, programming for the PDP-6, Lisp for the PDP-6, Lisp matrix inversion,
LAMBDA, SCHEME and its compiler Rabbit, NIL, LetS loop notation, and MAClisp. This series also has a large number of issues
of two periodicals: Lisp Pointers, which White contributed to as technical articles editor and, later, as editor of the entire
publication, and Lisp and Symbolic Computation (including issues under its later title Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation).
Conferences with material in this series include the ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming, International Workshop
on the Cooperative Extension and Refinement of Lisp (ICERL), Dynamic Objects Workshop and Association of Lisp Users Meeting,
MACSYMA Users' Conference, and Lisp Users and Vendors (LUV). Some of the technical reports outline Lisp implementation on
specific computers, including the IBM System/360, IBM System/370, and Burroughs B1700/1800. Finally, this series includes
a workbook from a Stanford University Lisp programming course, reports on Carnegie-Mellon University’s Spice Lisp instruction
set project, the IEEE standard for the Lisp dialect Scheme, and a paper by White titled “Historical Perspective on Numerics
in Lisp or, Numbers Are Symbols, too.” This series is arranged alphabetically by folder title.
102773610
ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming proceedings
1994
102773621
Carnegie-Mellon University Spice project
1983
102773592
Dynamic Objects Workshop and Association of Lisp Users Meeting proceedings
1996
102773612
ICERL '91 proceedings
1991
102773622
IEEE Scheme standard
1991-1992
102773611
Langages Lisp, Les
1994
102773618
Lisp 1.5 and its implementation on the IBM System/360 at RPI
1970
102773613
Lisp and symbolic computation : an international journal
1988-1991; 1994; 1999-2001
102773614
Lisp pointers
1987-1995
102773615
Lisp Users and Vendors (LUV) '92 conference material
1992
102773617
MACSYMA Users' Conference proceedings
1977; 1979
102773619
Portable Standard Lisp (PSL) manual and newsletter
1982; 1984
102773616
Project MAC Lisp and MAClisp development
1963-1984
102773620
Schemer's Guide, The
1990
102773623
Stanford University Lisp programming course material
1984
102773626
Technical reports and articles
1978-1998
102773627
UtiLisp manual
1988-01
Object-oriented programming, garbage collection, and other records, Series 3,
1972-2001
Series Scope and Content
This series is made up of material related to object oriented programming, garbage collection, artificial intelligence, floating-point
arithmetic, and other programming topics. Material dates from 1972 to 2001. Records related to object-oriented programming
make up about half of this series’ records. A large portion of those records are proceedings, working papers, and attendee
lists of the ACM’s OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications) Conference. The rest of the object-oriented
programming material consists of technical papers and reports, books, manuals, presentations, and newsletters, including the
ACM SIGPLAN OOPS Messenger. A smaller but still significant portion of this series contains technical papers and reports,
newsletters, and conference proceedings on garbage collection and memory management from a number of sources, including MIT,
Digital Equipment Corporation’s Western Research Laboratory, Xerox PARC, INRIA, and University of Illinois at Chicago. The
rest of this series contains technical papers and reports, manuals, standards, conference proceedings, and periodicals on
artificial intelligence, floating-point arithmetic, standardization, compilers, and other programming topics. Much of the
material on artificial intelligence was published by MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. White authored some of the
papers in this series on floating-point arithmetic and garbage collection. This series is arranged alphabetically by folder
title.
102773591
ACM SIGPLAN notices
1996
102773576
Annotated C++ reference manual, The
1990
102773581
Apropos newsletter
1989-1990
102773575
C traps and pitfalls
1988
102773582
DEC Western Research Laboratory papers on garbage collection
1988-02; 1989-10
102773594
Dylan programming : an object-oriented and dynamic language
1997
102773593
Ecrits d'ICSLA
1994-1995
102773578
Floating-point arithmetic
1972-1991
102773595
Franz Inc. presentations
1999
102773574
Image Understanding Workshop
1993
102773583
INRIA papers on garbage collection
1987; 1990
102773584
ISMM 2000 proceedings
2000
102773570
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory manuals and reports
1980-1984
102773585
MIT papers on garbage collection
1977-1988
102773598
Object-oriented concepts, databases, and applications
1989
102773597
Object-oriented modeling and design
1991
102773596
Object-oriented software construction
1988
102773600
Objectworks\Smalltalk
1990
102773601
OOPS messenger
1990-1995
102773586
OOPSLA '90 Workshop on Garbage Collection in Object-Oriented Systems
1990
102773603
OOPSLA '92 proceedings and tutorial notes
1992
102773599
OOPSLA '93 proceedings
1993-10
102773587
OOPSLA '93 Workshop on Memory Management and Garbage Collection
1993
102773604
OOPSLA '94 proceedings
1994-10
102773605
OOPSLA '95 proceedings with addendum
1995-10
102773606
OOPSLA '96 proceedings
1996-10
102773602
OOPSLA attendee lists
1986-1992
102773573
Organization for programs in fluid domains
1981
102773588
Other companies papers on garbage collection
1984; 1987
102773580
Other universities papers on garbage collection
1985-1991
102773608
Programs as Data Objects (PADO) proceedings
2001
102773577
Reports on compilers
1979-1991
102773607
Reports on inheritance
1984; 1989
102773609
Reports on object-oriented programming
1991-1993
102773569
Seventh IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications
1991
102773579
StandardView : the ACM journal on standardization
1993-09
102773589
University of Illinois at Chicago papers on garbage collection
1989-1991
102773590
Xerox PARC papers on garbage collection
1976-1985