Symbolics, Inc.: A failure of heterogeneous engineering (2001) [pdf]
That&#x27;s not really what went wrong with Symbolics. What really went wrong is mentioned in the article, though. &quot;Expert systems&quot; were not really very useful.<p><i>Another reason that Lisp machines were in high demand (despite a general lack of results) is due to a &quot;natural trajectory&quot; phenomenon.  AI, and especially expert systems,  were  seen as the future  of computing.  This is due to hype  generated  by  Feigenbaum, a  Stanford  University  professor.  Tom  Knight claims that Artificial Intelligence was oversold primarily because Feigenbaum fueled outrageous hype that computers would be able,  for example, to replace  medical doctors within 10 years.  Additional hype was generated  by the Japanese government sponsoring  of  the  &quot;Fifth Generation&quot; project. This project, essentially a massive effort by the Japanese to develop machines that think, sparked a nationalistic chord in America. SDI funding in some ways was a means to hedge the possible ramifications of the &quot;superior&quot; AI technology of Japan.</i><p>I went through Stanford CS when Feigenbaum was hyping away. For the hype, read his book, &quot;The Fifth Generation&quot;. Much of the Stanford CS department was convinced that expert systems would change the world, despite having almost nothing actually working. It was pathetic. Especially the aftermath, the &quot;AI Winter&quot;, when I once saw Feigenbaum wandering around the building amidst empty cubicles, looking lost.<p>Symbolics had some big technical problems. The biggest was that they didn&#x27;t use a microprocessor. They had a CPU built up from smaller components. So their cost was inherently higher, their hardware was less reliable, and they didn&#x27;t benefit from progress in microprocessors.  Once people got LISP compilers running on Motorola 68000 UNIX workstations, LISP machines were not really needed. Franz LISP on a Sun was comparable to using a Symbolics (we had both where I worked), and the refrigerator-sized Symbolics wasn&#x27;t worth the trouble. Symbolics was also noted for having a poor maintenance organization. They had to send someone out to fix your refrigerator-sized machine; you couldn&#x27;t just swap boards as on workstations.<p>Eventually Symbolics shrank their hardware down to reasonable size, but by then, nobody cared.