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Joined MIT
Richard Greenblatt, known as a child prodigy, came up with a love for chess. While playing chess, he met a UM student named Lester, who introduced him to hands-on electronic projects like making radios. This sparked Greenblatts love for electronics and solidified his decision to go to MIT. Levy, Steven. Hackers. Available from: VitalSource Bookshelf, O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2010. -
Joined the Tech Model Railroad Club
A student organization developed in 1946 that focused on the automated operation of model trains. It is known to be the oldest ongoing hacking group in the US. Greenblatt joined a few months after his enrollment in 1962, thanks to his love for electronics. -
FORTRAN for PDP-1
Thanks to the influence of Peter Samson and his version of FORTRAN on the 7090, Greenblatt was determine to recreate the program on the TMRC PDP-1 shortly after his induction to the club. He "wrote a program that would enable you to write in FORTRAN, taking what you wrote and compiling the code into machine language, as well as transforming the computer’s machine language responses back into FORTRAN." Levy, Steven. Hackers. Available from: VitalSource Bookshelf, O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2010. -
Dropped Out of MIT
All Greenblatt wanted to do was work on programming and hacking, which ended in him flunking out of school. This was the beginning of his career as a programmer and developer. -
Passion Towards The Hacker Ethic
The Hacker Ethic was a list of silently agreed upon rules between hackers. This list was something Greenblatt was passionate about, and he took it far more seriously than the group of hackers before him. -
LISP Complier on PDP-6/ MACLISP
One of the first projects Greenblatt took on at MIT. His goal was to allow John McCarthy's artificial intelligence language to run on a PDP-6. After seeing how a LISP compiler worked for the PDP-1, he didn't have too much desire to do this project. However, he brainstormed the impact that artificial intelligence could have on the future, which influenced him to continue on with the project. -
Hired at AI Lab
Greenblatt was hired at AI Labs after losing his previous job due to dropping out of school. Here he met Gosper and Samson, and made a name for himself as a hacker. -
Working with Bill Gosper
Levy writes "Greenblatt focused on pragmatic systems building, and Gosper on mathematical exploration", which allowed for them to be a synchronous duo. They both contributed to many projects as a duo, using each others best abilities. Levy, Steven. Hackers. Available from: VitalSource Bookshelf, O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2010. -
Ping-Pong with PDP-6
A project Greenblatt assisted on was one that allowed a mechanical arm connected to a PDP-6 and a camera, to catch a ball. They were able to get the arm to figure out the balls location and move itself in order to catch it. The end goal for Greenblatt was to get this robot to be able to play ping-pong. -
Publication of MacHack
Greenblatt takes his deep love for chess and develops a computer chess program during his time at MIT. MacHack became such a large program that it was the first of its kind to be played in a human tournament. -
ITS for PDP-6
Greenblatt assisted other MIT hackers in the development of Incompatible Time Sharing. This operating system included a terminal and a task tree to process commands. -
LISP Machines Inc.
Greenblatt formed a company named LISP Machines Inc. which wasn't favored by the other hackers at MIT. They told Greenblatt he needed to "move on" to a different type of machine, but Greenblatt ignored their request and created his own incorporation. CADR computers were built with the LISP language on them, allowing others to have access to a type of artificial intelligence. -
Steven Levy : The Hackers
Steven Levy writes a book called "The Hackers", which guides the reader through different programmers lives and their accomplishments leading up to today. Greenblatt played a major role in Levy's book, and even read it himself when it was published. -
LISP Inc. Fails due to Symbolics Inc.
The company Symbolics Inc. began selling copies of the CADR machines under their own name. They started recruiting employees from LISP Inc. and the AI Lab, which led to the downfall of Greenblatts company, where he ultimately resigned. -
Greenblatt's Thoughts on Today
After an interview with Steven levy, the author of "The Hackers", Greenblatt tells us that he despises todays coding languages like HTML and C++. He believes that LISP should have prevailed further than it ultimately did.