MACSYMA

MACSYMA (now often given in the cased form, Macsyma) was an ground-breaking symbolic mathematics/computing system. It was created at MIT, starting in 1967; it was based on earlier work in that area, at MIT and elsewhere. It was written in LISP; the MIT version of LISP, MACLISP. was given significant improvements to support it.

It later had a complex history, as MIT attempted to spin it off. Since the basic version had effectively been paid for by US Government funding, it was 'sort of' publicly available through them, and several early versions made it out that way. MIT tried to pass it off to Symbolics, but they, distracted by a focus on their LISP Machine products, didn't give it the support it needed against descendants inspired by it, which became its competition.

One major addition/enhancement made during that process was greatly improved support for actual numerical work, which also included improved graph production.

Funding for the project at MIT paid for the purchase of two PDP-10's running ITS; first MIT-ML, and later MIT-MC.

Further reading

• W. A. Martin, R. J. Fateman, The MACSYMA System, Second Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation, Los Angeles, 1971, pp. 59-75
• Joel Moses, Macsyma: A Personal History
• Richard Petti, Macsyma Saga - covers the post-MIT period in some detail
  • Macsyma Saga - footnotes to the above
• The MACSYMA Papers, 1970
• Richard J. Fateman, A Review of Macsyma, 1982-1984, revised lightly 10/2001

External links

• Macsyma - a productized version of Macsyma for Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP