History of Prolog

1965. Alan Robinson published "A Machine-Oriented Logic Based on the Resolution Principle".
1972. Alain Colmerauer and Phillipe Roussel (University of Aix-Marseille) developed Prolog in collaboration with Robert Kowalski (University of Edinburgh).
Prolog is an abbreviation for "Programmation en Logique" or "Programming in Logic".
1974. David Warren wrote an efficient implementation.
Heavily used in Europe.
Heavily used in Japan. For example, Prolog served as the basis for the ICOT Fifth Generation Computer Systems Initiative.

Japan's Fifth Generation Project

1982 - 1992.
Historically, Japan had followed the US and British leads in computer advancement.
The goal was to produce an "epoch-making computer" that would use Prolog to create a desktop system with supercomputer-like performance and use AI technologies.
Why the name? The first generation used vacuum tubes. The second generation used transistors and diodes. The third generation used integrated circuits. The fourth generation used microprocessors.
Goal: Inference computer technologies for knowledge processing.
Goal: Computer technologies to process large-scale databases and knowledge bases.
Goal: High performance workstations.
Goal: Distributed functional computer technologies.
Goal: Supercomputers for scientific calculation.
Goal: 100M to 1G LIPS. Logical Inferences per Second.
ICOT (Institute for Computer Technology) was formed to spearhead the project.
Unfortunately, Prolog did not support concurrency easily.
Unfortunately, single CPU technology continued to evolve rapidly.
Unfortunately, software continued to evolve rapidly. For example, Apple introduced GUIs to the masses.
Unfortunately, the internet evolved, making large locally-stored databases unnecessary.
Unfortunately, AI turned out to be harder than expected.
After 50 billion yen, the project was terminated and deemed an abject failure!

Disability argument: a machine can never do X
Mathematical argument: Gödel's incompleteness theorem
Informality argument: human behavior is too complex to capture by a set of rules