History
The name "Erlang", attributed to Bjarne Däcker, has been understood as a reference to Danish mathematician and engineer Agner Krarup Erlang, and (initially at least) simultaneously as an abbreviation of "Ericsson Language".
Erlang was designed with the aim of improving the development of telephony applications. The initial version of Erlang was implemented in Prolog and was influenced by the programming language PLEX used in earlier Ericsson exchanges. According to Armstrong, the language went from lab product to real applications following the collapse of the next-generation AXE exchange named AXE-N in 1995. As a result, Erlang was chosen for the next ATM exchange AXD.
In 1998, the Ericsson AXD301 switch was announced, containing over a million lines of Erlang, and reported to achieve a reliability of nine "9"s. Shortly thereafter, Erlang was banned within Ericsson Radio Systems for new products, citing a preference for non-proprietary languages. The ban caused Armstrong and others to leave Ericsson. The implementation was open sourced at the end of the year. The ban at Ericsson was eventually lifted, and Armstrong was re-hired by Ericsson in 2004.
In 2006, native symmetric multiprocessing support was added to the runtime system and virtual machine.
Read more about this topic: Erlang (programming Language)
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