MATHLAB is a

computer algebra system A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. The de ...

created in 1964 by

Carl Engelman Carl Engelman (October 21, 1929 – November 26, 1983) was an American computer scientist. Carl is best known as the creator of MATHLAB. He was employed by Mitre Corporation and Symbolics. He was a visiting professor at the University of Turin t ...

MITRE The mitre (Commonwealth English) or miter (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences; both pronounced ; ) is a type of headgear now known as the traditional, ceremonial headdress of ...

and written in Lisp. "MATHLAB 68" was introduced in 1967 and became rather popular in university environments running on DECs

PDP-6 The PDP-6, short for Programmed Data Processor model 6, is a computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during 1963 and first delivered in the summer of 1964. It was an expansion of DEC's existing 18-bit systems to use a 36-bit da ...

and

PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...

under

TOPS-10 TOPS-10 System (Timesharing / Total Operating System-10) is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlier "Mo ...

or TENEX. In 1969 this version was included in the

DECUS The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS) was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP- ...

user group's library (as 10-142) as royalty-free software. Carl Engelman left MITRE for

Symbolics Symbolics, Inc., is a privately held American computer software maker that acquired the assets of the former manufacturing company of the identical name and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp (programming language), Lisp sy ...

where he contributed his expert knowledge in the development of

Macsyma Macsyma (; "Project MAC's SYmbolic MAnipulator") is one of the oldest general-purpose computer algebra systems still in wide use. It was originally developed from 1968 to 1982 at MIT's Project MAC. In 1982, Macsyma was licensed to Symbolics and ...

Features

Abstract from DECUS Library Catalog:

MATHLAB is an on-line system providing machine aid for the mechanical symbolic processes encountered in analysis. It is capable of performing, automatically and symbolically, such common procedures as simplification, substitution, differentiation, polynomial factorization, indefinite integration, direct and inverse Laplace transforms, the solution of linear differential equations with constant coefficients, the solution of simultaneous linear equations, and the inversion of matrices. It also supplies fairly elaborate bookkeeping facilities appropriate to its on-line operation.

Applications

MATHLAB 68 has been used to solve electrical

linear circuit A linear circuit is an electronic circuit which obeys the superposition principle. This means that the output of the circuit ''F(x)'' when a linear combination of signals ''ax1(t) + bx2(t)'' is applied to it is equal to the linear combination o ...

s using an acausal modeling approach for symbolic circuit analysis.Labrèche P.
presentation: Linear Electrical Circuits:Symbolic Network Analysis
1977 This application was developed as a plug-in for MATHLAB 68 (open-source), building on MATHLAB's

linear algebra Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as :a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n=b, linear maps such as :(x_1, \ldots, x_n) \mapsto a_1x_1+\cdots +a_nx_n, and their representations in vector spaces and through matrix (mathemat ...

facilities (

Laplace transform In mathematics, the Laplace transform, named after Pierre-Simon Laplace (), is an integral transform that converts a Function (mathematics), function of a Real number, real Variable (mathematics), variable (usually t, in the ''time domain'') to a f ...

s, inverse Laplace transforms and linear algebra manipulation).

Print publications

References

{{Reflist Computer algebra systems Notebook interface