> Mike said: What!?? You mean Pegasus is a $10K AI machine? That’s something I can sell!
Before I knew what happened the Pegasus SPU was rechristened as AIM (AI Machines) and we were trying to figure out how we were going to support Common Lisp and Prolog in addition to Smalltalk.
The Pegasus was announced as the Tektronix 4404 in August 1984 at that year’s AAAI conference. The first production units shipped in January 1985 at a list price of $14,950. Even at that price it was considered a bargain.
This passage makes me sad. It shows an example of how people in the 80s produced an awesome language, but then caused it to lose mindshare by becoming too greedy too early. Instead of growing the community, they shooed people away with disproportionate fees.
Back in the day: "There are currently at least five vendors of Smalltalk implementations. Although the actual number of Smalltalk users is unknown, we believe it to be high. (It has been estimated that Digitalk Inc., alone, had sold over 100,000 Smalltalk/V licenses by 1993.)" NCITS J20 DRAFT of ANSI Smalltalk Standard
This passage makes me sad. It shows an example of how people in the 80s produced an awesome language, but then caused it to lose mindshare by becoming too greedy too early. Instead of growing the community, they shooed people away with disproportionate fees.