I just finished reading the LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual (still readily available from Amazon), published in 1962. The book is mind-blowing, because it mixes discussions of high-order functions with instructions on how to properly lay out programs on punch cards.

The "high level language" which shipped on every microcomputer platform of the 1970s and 1980s was Basic. I have often wondered why. Compared to Lisp, it is inelegant and inexpressive. Perhaps people who hacked larger computers of the era did not interact with microcomputer hobbyists. Perhaps it was too difficult to get Lisp fast enough to be usable on the old hardware, although if it was possible on big iron in the late 1950s, it should have also been possible on microprocessors in the 1970s.

An entire generation of programmers grew up using GOTO <line number> to call subroutines and execute loops. That same generation could have grown up using lambdas. How sad.