Logo (programming Language) - History

History

Logo was created in 1967 at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Cambridge, Massachusetts research firm, by Wally Feurzeig and Seymour Papert. Its intellectual roots are in artificial intelligence, mathematical logic and developmental psychology. The first four years of Logo research, development and teaching work was done at BBN. The first implementation of Logo, called Ghost, was written in LISP on an SDS 940. The goal was to create a math land where kids could play with words and sentences. Modeled on LISP, the design goals of Logo included accessible power and informative error messages. The use of virtual Turtles allowed for immediate visual feedback and debugging.

The first working turtle robot was created at MIT in 1969. A display turtle preceded the physical floor turtle. Modern Logo has not changed too much from the basic concepts before the first turtle. The first turtle was a tethered floor roamer, not radio-controlled or wireless. Later, BBN developed a turtle named Irving that had touch sensors and could move forwards, backwards, rotate, and ding its bell. The earliest year-long school users of Logo were in 1968-69 at Muzzey Jr High, Lexington MA. The virtual and physical turtles were first used by fifth graders at the Bridge School in Lexington, MA in 1970-71.