From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: luvisi@gmail.com (Andru Luvisi) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:57:35 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] b remnants? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 8:57 PM, A. P. Garcia wrote: > What intrigued me about this is that it's such an early example of an > abstract machine running as an interpreter. For what it's worth, an abstract machine based implementation for Algol 60 was published in 1964 in the book "Algol 60 Implementation" by Randell and Russell. It gives flowcharts, not source code. I seem to recall the book saying that a couple of different implementations has been built from the same set of flowcharts. If you're willing to count abstract machines meant for human use, rather than as a compiler target, there was a floating point "interpretive routine" for the EDSAC by 1951. See the first edition of "The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer" by Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill (though I think I remember seeing somewhere that they had it by 1949, but I can't find the reference right now). The idea being that you would run the "interpretive routine" and it would run a bunch of instructions for a virtual machine that had floating point support. Andru