Which machine to program

[John Keith]

(09-22-2024 06:08 PM)carey Wrote:  One reason it would be cool to write advanced astronomy software in RPL is that William C. Wickes (HP project manager for the 28C/S and 48SX and deeply involved in the development of RPL) did his physics Ph.D. work in astronomy at Princeton with physics Professor Robert Dicke (who first predicted the 3 degree K microwave background radiation but somehow didn't receive a Nobel prize). I can't help but think that somewhere in mind in the development of RPL was its utility for writing scientific software.

This is likely considering that Forth, one of the languages on which RPL is based, was written by an astronomer for controlling telescopes. Wickes was also involved in the development of the HP-71B and its Forth-Assembler ROM.