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I was under the impression that Forth was originally a tiny language on eight bit computers. Its stack-implented reverse polish syntax required few computer resources.

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FORTH predates eight bit computers; it was developed in 1968 on the low-end IBM 1130 computer. Carl Claunch (who I restore computers with) recently tracked down the original FORTH and got it running on his vintage 1130. This FORTH interpreter code is interesting because it is starts out by building FORTH primitives from 1130 machine code and ends up with an interactive FORTH console just a few pages later.

Link: https://rescue1130.blogspot.com/2018/03/historical-recreatio... discussed a few months back on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611505

Forth was for 16-bit computers, and liked to do everything in 16-bit cells.

(That's 16-bit in the sense of "PDP-11" or "IBM 1130", not in the sense of "Amiga or Atari ST", which very much didn't have a 16-bit memory space.)

What's your definition of a 16-bit memory space, that the PDP-11 had but the Amiga didn't?

The Amiga had 32 bit instructions and 24-bit address width (with a 16-bit bus width). The 1130 was 15-bit address space of 16-bit words.

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