Kenneth Colby’s 1972 PARRY chatbot was reanimated in a single day using a 1974 WAITS image, then made to converse with the original ELIZA.
Key Takeaways
PARRY ran from a pre-existing compiled image (PARRY.DMP[1,3]) inside Bruce Baumgart’s 1974 WAITS snapshot via Richard Cornwell’s SIMH fork; three missing support files (QPERRY[PAR,BLF], PAR2.FIL[DIA,KMC], ERR.FIL[DIA,KMC]) were the only blocker.
Rupert Lane quasi-replicated RFC 439 (“PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR”) by copy-pasting turns between PARRY and Weizenbaum’s original ELIZA; the 1973 RFC used a downstream Bernie Cosell BBN Lisp ELIZA, not the MAD-SLIP original.
The full stack to reproduce this today: Cornwell’s sims fork + the updated WAITS image + LOGIN 1,REG then R PARRY; ELIZA side available at the rupertl/eliza-ctss GitHub repo.
A genuine RFC 439 replication is now tractable: Cosell’s BBN Lisp ELIZA, converted to Common Lisp, is available on ELIZAGen.org and could be paired with the restored PARRY.
Next research targets include running PARRY from MLISP source rather than the compiled dump, and testing files from earlier/later than the 1974 time bracket.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters confirm the RFC 439 historical nuance surfaced in the source: the 1973 internet conversation used a Lisp ELIZA, not Weizenbaum’s MAD-SLIP original, a detail attributed to Anthony Hay’s close study of ELIZA variants.
No substantive technical disagreement in the thread; the single comment is corroborative, not critical.
Notable Comments
@abrax3141: confirms Lars brought up PARRY and Rupert reproduced RFC 439, adding: “RFC439 used a Lisp ELIZA, not the MAD-SLIP original.”
