Reprinted in Marvin Minsky (ed), Semantic Information Processing, pp. 354-402, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

Reprinted in Marvin Minsky (ed), Semantic Information Processing, pp. 354-402, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

"Among the new languages for instructing computers is a remarkable one called LISP. The name comes from the first three letters of LIST and the first letter of PROCESSING. Not only is LISP a language for instructing computers but it is also a formal mathematical language, in the same way as elëmentary algebra when rigorously defined and used is a formal mathematical language.The LISP language and its implementation on the IBM 7090 computer were worked out by a group including John McCarthy, Stephen B. Russell , Daniel J. Edwards, Paul W. Abrahams, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin, Marvin L. Minsky, and others.LISP is designed primarily for processing data consisting of lists of symbols. It has been used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic , game playing, and other fields of intelligent handling of symbols."Information International, Inc, Cambridge, Mass.

"It is well known to be impossible to tile with dominoes a checkerboard with two opposite corners deleted. This fact is readily stated in the first order predicate calculus, but the usual proof which involves a parity and counting argument does not readily translate into predicate calculus. We conjecture that this problem will be very difficult for programmed proof procedures."Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project Memo No. 16

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We wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions and encouragement of Herbert Simon, Edward Feigenbaum, Julian Feldman, Frank Marzocco, and Charles Baker. Thanks are also due the Committee on Simulation of Cognitive Processes of the Social Science. Use the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues.

E.A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman (Eds.). Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill, 1963. This collection includes twenty classic papers by such pioneers as A. M. Turing and Marvin Minsky who were behind the pivotal advances in artificially simulating human thought processes with computers. All Parts are available as downloadable pdf files; most individual chapters are also available separately. COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE. A. M. Turing. CHESS-PLAYING PROGRAMS AND THE PROBLEM OF COMPLEXITY. Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. SOME STUDIES IN MACHINE LEARNING USING THE GAME OF CHECKERS. A. L. Samuel. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS WITH THE LOGIC THEORY MACHINE: A CASE STUDY IN HEURISTICS. Allen Newell J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. REALIZATION OF A GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS OF THE GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter, J.R. Hansen, and D. W. Loveland. SUMMARY OF A HEURISTIC LINE BALANCING PROCEDURE. Fred M. Tonge. A HEURISTIC PROGRAM THAT SOLVES SYMBOLIC INTEGRATION PROBLEMS IN FRESHMAN CALCULUS. James R. Slagle. BASEBALL: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERER. Green, Bert F. Jr., Alice K. Wolf, Carol Chomsky, and Kenneth Laughery. INFERENTIAL MEMORY AS THE BASIS OF MACHINES WHICH UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE. Robert K. Lindsay. PATTERN RECOGNITION BY MACHINE. Oliver G. Selfridge and Ulric Neisser. A PATTERN-RECOGNITION PROGRAM THAT GENERATES, EVALUATES, AND ADJUSTS ITS OWN OPERATORS. Leonard Uhr and Charles Vossler. GPS, A PROGRAM THAT SIMULATES HUMAN THOUGHT. Allen Newell and H.A. Simon. THE SIMULATION OF VERBAL LEARNING BEHAVIOR. Edward A. Feigenbaum. PROGRAMMING A MODEL OF HUMAN CONCEPT FORMULATION. Earl B. Hunt and Carl I. Hovland. SIMULATION OF BEHAVIOR IN THE BINARY CHOICE EXPERIMENT Julian Feldman. A MODEL OF THE TRUST INVESTMENT PROCESS. Geoffrey P. E. Clarkson. A COMPUTER MODEL OF ELEMENTARY SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. John T. Gullahorn and Jeanne E. Gullahorn. TOWARD INTELLIGENT MACHINES. Paul Armer. STEPS TOWARD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky. A SELECTED DESCRIPTOR-INDEXED BIBLIOGRAPHY TO THE LITERATURE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky.

Report #SP-1395, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.

A large high-speed general-purpose digital computer (IBM 7090) wasProgrammed to solve elementary symbolic integration problems at approximatelythe level of a good college freshman. The program is called SAINT,an acronym for "Symbolic Automatic INTegrator." The SAINT programis written in LISP (McCarthy, 1960), and most of the work reported hereJs the substance of a doctoral dissertation at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (Slagle, 1961). This discussion concerns the SAINT programand its performance.Some typical samples of SAINT's external behavior are given so thatthe reader may think in concrete terms. Journal of the ACM, Vol 10, No. 4, pp. 507-520, October 1963.

"The LISP language is designed primarily for symbolic data processing. It has been used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic, game playing, and other fields of artificial intelligence.LISP is a formal mathematical language. It is therefore podsible to give a concise yet complete description of it. Such is the purpose of this first section of the manual. Other sections will describe ways of using LISP to advantage and will explain extensions of the language which make it a convenient programming system."The M.I.T. Press