Eliza
| Filename | eliza-60.hqx |
|---|---|
| Size | 114.8 KB (117592 bytes) |
| Downloads | 13 |
Eliza is a Macintosh implementation of Joseph Weizenbaum's 1966 chatbot, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by pattern-matching the user's typed sentences and reflecting them back as questions. Several independent Mac ports exist, from primitive 1980s System 6 builds to richer 1990s rewrites with far larger conversational pattern sets.
Versions on the Mac
The oldest archived Mac Eliza is Charles Hayden's v1.3 from 1985. Stephen Hunt released a v1.0 in 1987. Tom Bender carried the lineage forward with a v4.4 in 1995 and a v6.0 in 1996, both substantially expanded over the early ports.
How it works
Like the original Eliza, the Mac versions read a script of decomposition and reassembly rules, scan user input for keywords, and emit a templated response. There is no actual understanding; the illusion of conversation comes from carefully crafted reflective patterns.
Cultural footprint
An Eliza was famously bundled on the disk that accompanied Bob LeVitus's 1990 Addison-Wesley book Stupid Mac Tricks, putting the program in front of a wide non-academic Mac audience.
Preservation
Multiple Mac Eliza builds, including Tom Bender's Eliza 6.0.1 and the related Azile 4.5, are preserved on Macintosh Garden and Macintosh Repository, and the CMU AI Repository keeps an archival mirror under areas/classics/eliza/mac/.
This file is part of the MacTrove archive. See the Thank You page for the upstream mirrors we rely on. It is BinHex encoded — use The Unarchiver to decode it.
