Re: Church numerals in early lisp implementations?

Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> writes:

Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org> writes:
>
   McCarthy wrote this in ``History of Lisp''.
>
   > Numbers were originally implemented in LISP I as lists of atoms, and
   > this proved too slow for all but the simplest computations.
>
   Was that Church numerals?
>
Certainly not.
>
The "atoms" is question were probably machine words containing the
digits of the number in some suitable base.  I would guess base 2^36 or
2^35, depending on how they chose to represent negative numbers --
similar to the way GMP still works today.  But I don't know for sure.
I've never seen this documented anywhere.

Do you know if they have big numbers in those early implementations?
(Why would they use a list of things?)  I'm now thinking that by ``list
of atoms'' (and with the light of from your post) they were supporting
big numbers.  Their algorithms were perhaps naive, explaining ``the too
slow for all but the simplest computations''.  Thanks!