After many hours of web searching I have found a MATLAB distribution from 1982, which is in the public domain.
It was a port of MATLAB for the “NeXT” system [UNIX] which was done in 1991. Essentially a collection of 72 FORTRAN source files, it only needed removal of excess [EOF?] characters padding to make them compile together and work as “MATLAB.EXE”.
Here is a simple MATLAB session:
*
* Welcome to OpenVMS (TM) VAX Operating System, Version V7.3
*
* MicroVAX II
*
*
Username: system
Password:
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* Welcome to OpenVMS VAX V7.3 *
* *
* Running on a |d|i|g|i|t|a|l MicroVAX II *
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Last interactive login on Friday, 2-APR-2021 20:54
Last non-interactive login on Sunday, 28-MAR-2021 22:46
$ run matlab.exe
< M A T L A B >
Version of 25 May 1982
Ported to NeXT 30 Nov 1991
Ported back to VAX 18 Mar 2021
HELP is available
<>a=[1 2 3 ; 4 5 -6 ; 7 8 0]
A =
1. 2. 3.
4. 5. -6.
7. 8. 0.
<>a*a'
ANS =
14. -4. 23.
-4. 77. 68.
23. 68. 113.
<>help
Type HELP followed by ...
INTRO (To get started)
NEWS (recent revisions)
ABS ATAN BASE CHAR CHOL CHOP COND CONJ
COS DET DIAG DIAR DISP EIG EPS EXEC
EXP EYE FLOP HESS HILB IMAG INV KRON
LINE LOAD LOG LU MAGI NORM ONES ORTH
PINV PLOT POLY PRIN PROD QR RAND RANK
RAT RCON REAL ROOT ROUN RREF SAVE SCHU
SIN SIZE SQRT SUM SVD TRIL TRIU USER
CLEA ELSE END EXIT FOR HELP IF LONG
RETU SEMI SHOR WHAT WHIL WHO WHY
ANS EDIT FILE FUN MACRO
( ) ; : + - * / \ = . , ' < >
<>lala
QUIT SINGING AND GET BACK TO WORK.
<>exit
total flops 37
ADIOS
FORTRAN STOP
$