Early LISP history (1956 - 1959)

This paper describes the development of LISP from McCarthy's first research in the topic of programming languages for AI until the stage when the LISP1 implementation had developed into a serious program (May 1959). We show the steps that led to LISP and the various proposals for LISP interpreters (between November 1958 and May 1959). The paper contains some correcting details to our book (32).