 This variable is "late-bound"; it allows a method defined in one class to invoke another method that is defined later, in some subclass thereof.Terminology invoking "objects" and "oriented" in the modern sense of object-oriented programming made its first appearance at MIT in the late 1950s and early 1960s.In the environment of the artificial intelligence group, as early as 1960, "object" could refer to identified items (LISP atoms) with properties (attributes);
Alan Kay was later to cite a detailed understanding of LISP internals as a strong influence on his thinking in 1966.