John McCarthy said that he never had the intention to realize the lambda calculus, but he followed that statement with the corollary that had someone "started out with that intention, he might have ended with something like LISP." Peter Landin was a pioneer in that regard. See "The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions", published in 1964, and the SECD virtual machine. Machine interpreters like SECD and CEK may come close to a "realization" of the lambda calculus. Their design is directly inspired by its semantics. You don't necessarily end up with something like LISP, but you can, see Lispkit and LispMe.
John McCarthy said that he never had the intention to realize the lambda calculus, but he followed that statement with the corollary that had someone "started out with that intention, he might have ended with something like LISP." Peter Landin was a pioneer in that regard. See "The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions", published in 1964, and the SECD virtual machine. Machine interpreters like SECD and CEK may come close to a "realization" of the lambda calculus. Their design is directly inspired by its semantics. You don't necessarily end up with something like LISP, but you can, see Lispkit and LispMe.