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In those days computers were large and had a tiny fraction of the computing power of the devices and systems we are familiar with today. Computer graphics was in its infancy. Available graphic computer screens were all prohibitively expensive. Marvin Minsky felt it would be good to have something smaller, simpler, and affordable. He designed and built a computer named TT2500 that supported an early and intriguing version of Logo.

In this workshop we will explore some of the history of that era and compare Minsky Logo with other versions of Logo, both historical and contemporary. We will introduce an online emulator of Minsky Logo that you can explore during the workshop and take away to investigate further on your own and with your students.

About the workshop leader:

Since the late 1970s, Brian Silverman has been involved in the invention of learning environments for children. His work includes dozens of LOGO versions, LogoWriter and MicroWorlds among them, Scratch, LEGO® robotics, TurtleArt, the PicoCricket, and the Phantom Fish Tank. Brian has been a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab, enjoys recreational math, and is a computer scientist and master tinkerer. He once even built a tic-tac-toe playing computer out of TinkerToys.

Resources

• logothings is a collection of musing by Cynthia Solomon on the history of the Logo programming language. 
• A Logo Primer is a brief introduction to Turtle Geometry and the Logo programming language. 
• An Introduction to Logo and Turtle Geometry is a series of brief video clips in which Seymour Papert introduces Logo and Turtle Geometry. The clips are excerpts from Seymour Papert: On Logo.