100 Years of Erlang
Quinn Wilton / @wilton_quinn / quinnwilton.com















Joe Armstrong, 1950 - 2019
The Computer Science Laboratory @ Ellemtel, circa 1988

Joe Armstrong, A History of Erlang (2007)
of the many inventors of technical improvements in that historic period, most have remained anonymous. Few names have been recorded in the history of the telephone, most of them being completely unknown.
- Robert Chapuis, 100 Years of Telephone Switching (2003)


Boardman Building, New Haven, Connecticut
First Telephone Exchange

The first telephone


Hello Alexander.
Hello Watson!

Notes about George W. Coy, University of Connecticut Library

George Willard Coy
The first telephone directory

ELLEMTEL CS Lab Directory (as of 1994)


Blueprint of Coy's Exchange
An early exchange, modeled after Coy's, in Bridgeport, Connecticut



Western Electric "Standard" Switchboard



Almon Strowger

The Bamberg herald, February 27, 1913

New-York tribune, December 7, 1919

Strowger, at the height of his paranoia

The Bamberg herald, February 27, 1913

The Bamberg herald, February 27, 1913

Strowger's nemesis. Probably.

The Bamberg herald, February 27, 1913

Up four, and over three

The Bamberg herald, February 27, 1913


Step-by-Step Switch
Step-by-Step Switch, front

New-York tribune, December 7, 1919


Patent for the "Two-Motion Strowger Switch"

circa 1902
Strowger Sunburst Dial, circa 1903



Abbeville Press and Banner, January 6 1892
New-York tribune, December 7, 1919

A wall of Strowger switches

Western Kansas World, November 5th 1892

Joe Armstrong, A History of Erlang (2007)

AXD301


If you wish to make an erlang from scratch, you must first invent the uniselector
- Carl Sagan

Concurrent Programming in Erlang (1993)




Chapter 13: Programming Telephony, New Concepts in Parallel Programming (1990)

Ivar Jacobson

Communication Between Heterogeneous Systems (2000)







defmodule Phone do
def idle() do
receive do
:off_hook ->
start_tone()
getting_number()
{:seize, pid} ->
send(pid, :seized)
start_ringing()
ringing_b_side()
end
end
defp getting_number() do
receive do
...
end
end
defp ringing_b_side() do
receive do
...
end
end
defp start_tone(), do: ...
defp start_ringing(), do: ...
end
phone = spawn(&Phone.idle/0)
send(phone, :off_hook)



Magnus Fröberg

Magnus Fröberg

Message Sequence Diagram generated by et_viewer
Joe philosophizing, 1985

Solve Ericsson's software problem.
- Bjarne Däcker
This seemed to me at the time a quite reasonable request—though I now realise that it was far more difficult than I had imagined
- Joe Armstrong, A History of Erlang (2007)

Joe Armstrong, A History of Erlang (2007)





influences(erlang, elixir).
influences(erlang, clojure).
influences(prolog, erlang).
influences(prolog, clojure).
influences(lisp, erlang).
influences(lisp, clojure).
influences(clojure, elixir).
influences(ruby, elixir).
influences(plex, erlang).
influences(smalltalk, erlang).
influences(haskell, clojure).
influences(java, clojure).
ancestor(X, Y) :- influences(X, Y).
ancestor(X, Y) :-
influences(Parent, Y),
ancestor(X, Parent).
Atom
Atom
Functor


u :- p, q, ..., t.
u ← (p ∧ q ∧ ... ∧ t)
false ← p ∧ q ∧ ... ∧ t
...to first-order logic!
...negate it!
...find a contradiction!
Solution!


Logic Programming for Real-Time Control of Telecommunication Switching Systems (1990)

Joe Armstrong, Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors (2003)









Strand: New Concepts in Parallel Programming, 1990








UBF(B) specification for an IRC server
(types omitted for space)


Joe Armstrong, Erlang Mailing List (2016)

Joe Armstrong, Erlang Mailing List (2016)

Joe Armstrong, Making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors (2003)



Research Roadmap for STARDUST


github.com/gertab/ElixirST
Type safe distributed actors with hot code reloading!
I have this idea in which we’ll connect all of the worlds Erlang systems to each other, imagine if every process could talk to every other process, world-wide!
- Joe Armstrong




Abbeville Press and Banner, September 28, 1892
100 Years of Erlang - Slimmed
By quinnwilton
100 Years of Erlang - Slimmed
- 856