The LISP Museum
c/o Herbert Stoyan
Universitat Konstanz
PO Box 5560
D-775 Konstanz l
West Germany.

Dear Colleague,

This letter is to inform you about the History of LISP conference. LISP will be 30 years old in the fall of 1988 and so it is an auspicious time at which to recognise the many valuable contributions LISP has made to computer science as a whole. In addition, there can be no more appropriate location than Cambridge, Mass., to hold such a meeting.

The attached announcement and call for papers outlines some of the themes we believe are important and should be represented at such a meeting. We hope that you would like to take part in this celebration of the 30th anniversary of LISP and urge you to submit a paper addressing the issues we have mentioned - or if a significant omission has been made please feel free to contact me so that it may be put right.

There will be several invited talks from people who have played major roles in the development of LISP, including, of course, John McCarthy. Suggestions for other invited talks are also welcome. The programme committee so far comprises: Dan Bobrow, Tony Hearn, Herbert Stoyan and Dan Weinreb.

Each paper should concentrate on an historical exposition of some aspect of LISP or LISP related work, starting with some introductory information, followed by a history of the development of the subject and finishing with a review of the current state of the art. In particular, it is most important, because of the archival nature of the material, that all the people who contributed to the work should be given the proper credit.

Yours sincerely,
Herbert Stoyan