Factor of 40?

[Jonathan Rees <Rees@YALE.ARPA>]

    From: Richard Fateman <fateman%ucbdali%ucb-vax.arpa>

    You can provide some evidence that the T system is faster.  Of course it
    could be.  Early papers on T claimed it was 40 times faster than Franz, but
    this is absurd, overall, since it would mean that T (on a VAX 780) would
    have to run about 10 times faster than a KL-10 Maclisp system. It is
    not clear what you mean about termination.

    ... Having read the first version as a member of the program committee, and
    hence a referee, I asked that the statement be supported or removed.
    It was removed.

As principle author of the paper alluded to, and on reviewing my early
drafts and correspondence with the program committee, I happen to know
that:

    1. No "early papers" by anyone directly associated with T, nor
       any later papers or other communications, including the initial
       or final drafts of the Lisp and FP Symposium paper, made any
       definite claims about T's speed.  (Therefore there could have been
       no such statements to remove.)

    2. The Symposium program committee never requested that any changes
       be made to the T paper.

If you have evidence to the contrary then I would like to hear about
it.  (Perhaps you are thinking of something said by someone not
affiliated with the project.) If not, then I request that you distribute
a message retracting your statements.

Your intent seems to be to discredit the T project by attributing
to it claims which are obviously ridiculous to anyone trained in
computer science.