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Spacewar written in Apple Logo

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Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#21

Post by thought_alarm »

reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

Logo was created by Seymour Papert. He formed his own company in 1980, called Logo Computer Systems Inc., and they produced versions of Logo for various home computers in the early 80s, including the Apple II.

http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history...

Apparently they're still around: http://www.microworlds.com/company/profile.html

The version I used in 1983 was for the Coleco Adam computer, which uses the same video and sound chips as the TI99/4A. This version of Logo supported 32 sprites, 16 color graphics, 4 channel sound, and had a built-in sprite editor.

The language itself was quite slow, but it was very easy to come up with all sorts of interesting animations using the 32 sprites. You give a sprite a speed and direction and off it goes. It was a lot of fun and I spent many hours with it as a kid.

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#24

Post by reaperducer »

thought_alarm wrote: post #21
reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

Logo was created by Seymour Papert. He formed his own company in 1980, called Logo Computer Systems Inc., and they produced versions of Logo for various home computers in the early 80s, including the Apple II. http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history... Apparently they're still around: http://www.microworlds.com/company/profile.html The version I used in 1983 was for the Coleco Adam computer, whic…

Found it!

Byte magazine, August 1981, page 32.

The letter was from Stephen again, identified only as “MIT Logo Laboratory.”

”Texas Instruments is a very generous friend of MIT, and some people here are embarrassed about a situation that might threaten one of its sales programs. So, in an effort to appease its corporate friend, MIT has been stalling the distribution of Apple Logo.”

The whole thing is available on archive.org.

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#25

Post by Lord_Nightmare »

reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

Well, it eventually was released, unclear if earlier, but for sure today (20181004): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142287

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#26

Post by effish »

reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

This is so not true. I wrote the TI 99/4 Logo at MIT (translated from an implementation in Pascal by Gary Drescher). The Apple II implementation was overlapping, started a little later, the guys doing it had the next desk. It was licensed by MIT to Terrapin Inc and released ('82) not long after the 99/4 version ('81).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/migcvjvgu31qaz9/LogoHistory_Microc...

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#27

Post by effish »

effish wrote: post #26
reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

This is so not true. I wrote the TI 99/4 Logo at MIT (translated from an implementation in Pascal by Gary Drescher). The Apple II implementation was overlapping, started a little later, the guys doing it had the next desk. It was licensed by MIT to Terrapin Inc and released ('82) not long after the 99/4 version ('81). https://www.dropbox.com/s/migcvjvgu31qaz9/LogoHistory_Microc...

Note, not open source. All these were commercial products.

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#28

Post by effish »

reaperducer wrote: post #24
thought_alarm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logo was created by Seymour Papert. He formed his own company in 1980, called Logo Computer Systems Inc., and they produced versions of Logo for various home computers in the early 80s, including the Apple II. http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/what_is_logo/history... Apparently they're still around: http://www.microworlds.com/company/profile.html The version I used in 1983 was for the Coleco Adam computer, whic…

Found it! Byte magazine, August 1981, page 32. The letter was from Stephen again, identified only as “MIT Logo Laboratory.” ”Texas Instruments is a very generous friend of MIT, and some people here are embarrassed about a situation that might threaten one of its sales programs. So, in an effort to appease its corporate friend, MIT has been stalling the distribution of Apple Logo.” The whole thing is available on arch…

I don't know that there was any stalling, as it was licensed and released by Terrapin in 1982.

This person then did work for Logo Computer Systems on the competing version of Apple II Logo.

I'll message him and ask him to respond.

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#29

Post by effish »

effish wrote: post #28
reaperducer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found it! Byte magazine, August 1981, page 32. The letter was from Stephen again, identified only as “MIT Logo Laboratory.” ”Texas Instruments is a very generous friend of MIT, and some people here are embarrassed about a situation that might threaten one of its sales programs. So, in an effort to appease its corporate friend, MIT has been stalling the distribution of Apple Logo.” The whole thing is available on arch…

I don't know that there was any stalling, as it was licensed and released by Terrapin in 1982. This person then did work for Logo Computer Systems on the competing version of Apple II Logo. I'll message him and ask him to respond.

Ahh, looking down below at the first response there's a link to a '95 comp.lang.logo post with a great looong item by Leigh Klotz on the history of that. His claim was that it was legal wrangling between NSF and MIT on the licensing that caused the delay. This seems highly believable.

Re: Spacewar written in Apple Logo

#30

Post by larsbrinkhoff »

effish wrote: post #26
reaperducer wrote: post #11

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason…

This is so not true. I wrote the TI 99/4 Logo at MIT (translated from an implementation in Pascal by Gary Drescher). The Apple II implementation was overlapping, started a little later, the guys doing it had the next desk. It was licensed by MIT to Terrapin Inc and released ('82) not long after the 99/4 version ('81). https://www.dropbox.com/s/migcvjvgu31qaz9/LogoHistory_Microc...

We also have Drescher's Pascal Logo incoming soon.

Preview: https://github.com/PDP-10/its-vault/blob/master/files/aplogo...

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