The Lisp machine market collapses

The market for specialised AI hardware began to vanish: general-purpose workstations and personal computers came close to Lisp machines in performance at a far lower price.

By Symbolics' own presentation its revenue for the year to 30 June 1986 was 98 million dollars, against 69 million a year earlier. Regular prices of its 3640 and 3645 systems that summer ran from 57,000 to 74,900 dollars. AI Magazine's review of the AAAI-86 exhibits said an entry-level Symbolics system was now priced at 49,900 dollars and the minimum price of the high-end model had been cut from 107,900 to 98,900. The same review: personal computers on the 386 were approaching the performance of Symbolics workstations, and the 386 was "the last nail in the coffin" for Lisp machines as application-delivery vehicles, though their development environments were still unequalled. Dan Weinreb of Symbolics later wrote that Lisp on Sun, Apollo and other workstations was not quite as good as theirs but good enough for most purposes. That a half-billion-dollar market vanished within a year is Crevier's claim (1993), via Wikipedia; the book itself was not read. It damaged confidence in the whole field, though the expert systems themselves did not stop working.