Re: Invention of the stack

From: Joachim Pimiskern <JoachimPimiskern_at_web.de>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:45:57 +0100
Message-ID: <52lrr6F1oat0eU1@mid.individual.net>

Walt schrieb:
> Does anyone know whether Djikstra got the idea for stacks from someone else,
> or invented it independently?

In Germany, there's also the olden term Keller (Cellar) for a stack datastructure. Names that should be mentioned are

   Jan Lukasiewicz
   Friedrich Ludwig Bauer (he and Samelson patented the stack)    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Ludwig_Bauer    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_L._Bauer    Helmut Angstl
   Klaus Samelson

> Does anyone know whether stacks (sometimes called pushdown lists in the
> early literature) predate McCarthy's development of Lisp?

Lisp is actually an implementation of lambda calculus (developed by Alonzo Church, 1934).

Regards,
Joachim Received on Sun Feb 04 2007 - 04:45:57 CST