HP 3000, APL\3000, the HP 2641A APL Display Station, and stuff.

[Eric Smith]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 3:22 PM Gavin Scott via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> APL on the 3000 was a project started at HP Labs
> in Palo Alto in the early 1970s.

[...]

> This would be the first
> full APL implementation on a "small" (non-mainframe) computer.
>

There was IBM APL\1130 version 2, introduced in 1969. Maybe that can't
considered "full"? I don't know all of what's missing; some accounts claim
that it almost had feature parity with APL\360, except the circle function,
which admittedly is a rather significant omission. I would be surprised if
the circle function didn't make an appearance in later releases.

In any case, that's awesome work resurrecting it!

I used a 3000 a little bit in school from 1982 to 1984, but unfortunately
it was mostly used for RJE to a System/370 elsewhere, so I didn't learn too
much about the 3000.