This talk presents the roots and early development of partial evaluation and mixed computation in eg Japan, the USSR and Sweden in the 1970es, as well as a somewhat more personal account of realizing self-applicable partial evaluation (the second and third Futamura projections) in practice in Copenhagen in the 1980es.

We also consider another early instance of constructive self-application, namely Böhm’s remarkable 1954 dissertation and its place in early compiler development.