ESOC 210 SP23 Timeline: Ricky Greenblatt

By sakinahz

  • Memorial Student Union, UofM

    Ricky Greenblatt’s father takes him to the Memorial Student Union at the University of Missouri, which ultimately changed his life. He met a good friend, Lester, who introduced him to Mr. Houghton where he built all sorts of projects from amplifiers to modulators to vacuum tubes.

  • TMRC (The Model Railroad Club)

    His first semester he was able to get acquainted with the Model Railroad Club, to which he felt inspired to write the first FORTRAN for the PDP-1.

  • College

    Greenblatt chooses MIT which he enters in the fall of 1962.

  • Introduction to PDP-1

    Sophomore year, Greenblatt flunked out of the MIT student body as he became more focused on hacking for the PDP-1 than going to classes and getting a degree.

  • PDP-6

    One of the first projects Greenblatt worked on with the PDP-6 was the LISP compiler that allowed the machine to run the latest version of John McCarthy’s AI language.

  • MacHack VI Program

    Greenblatt developed the MacHack VI program for the DEC PDP-6. In 1967 it became the first computer to be able to play against a person in chess.

  • MacHack vs. Dreyfus

    Greenblatt invites Dreyfus to play against the MacHack VI; Dreyfus loses against the MacHack VI.

  • Project LISP

    Greenblatt started the MIT Lisp project, quickly joining the project were other MIT hackers David Moon, Richard Stallman and others. The MIT Lisp project’s language features fitted with the PDP-10 MacLisp, with that the projects cross fertilized.

  • MacHack vs. Bobby Fischer

    Bobby Fischer, unbeaten chess champion, plays three games against MacHack VI. Fischer ends up winning.

  • LISP Machine Inc.

    Greenblatt founded LISP Machine Inc, which competes alongside Symbolics, a similar company founded by his former MIT colleagues.

  • Bankrupt

    LISP Machine Inc, goes bankrupt

  • Timesharing System

    Richard Greenblatt alongside Tom Knight and Stewart Nelson co-wrote the Incompatible Timesharing System for the PDP-6 and 10 that was used at MIT.

  • MIT LISP Machine

    Later on, him and Tom Knight became the main leaders of the MIT Lisp machine

  • Gigamos System Inc.

    The former Lisp Machine became the Gigamos System Inc. with about 45 workers and Richard Greenblatt being the new president.

  • Founding Fathers

    Both Greenblatt and Gosper are considered the “founding fathers,” of the hacker community.