Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:10:24 -0700
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From: ltaylor@kaiwan.com (Larry A. Taylor)
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Subject: CM> Internet node #1 at UCLA
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Subject: Internet node #1 at UCLA
UCLA hosted node #1 of the Internet, then begun as the Arpanet. The actual
message
switching box for IMP #1 still resides in the Graduate Student Archives, on
the 3rd
floor of Boelter Hall. One wag has suggested that this was typical of the
poor way the
department keeps old equipment around.
I wish I had a better page to point at concerning the history of the
Internet at UCLA.
Dr. Leonard Kleinrock's faculty page is at:
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/www-mounts/lanai_www/fweb/faculty_pages/graphics_page
s/kleinrock.html
LAT
Larry A. Taylor, . UCLA Computer Science Dept., Ph.D.
candidate . DBA North Circle Software, 13104
Philadelphia St, Suite 208, Whitter, CA 90601. Bus. phone, (310) 698-2739.
Fax (310) 698-8164. <75176.1071@compuserve.com>,
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:14:18 -0700
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From: "Laurence I. Press"
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Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE --> SABRE?.
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
> There was an additional spin-off as well: IBM engineers learned how to
> build large computers as a byproduct of their reworking of MIT's
> design of SAGE. This contributed substantially to the evolution of
> their 700 series computers, which eventually superseded Univacs as
> the standard large system of that era.
>
Did lessons learned on SAGE transfer to SABRE and the on-line banking
apps.?
Larry Press
[Note from moderator: I heard that a VP from IBM was on an American
Airlines flight and happened to sit next to a senior person at American
Airlines. The IBM person was working on SAGE and out of this conversation
talks were initiated on creating SABRE -- the automated reservation system
for American Airlines. Anyone have more details on this connection?]
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:18:00 -0700
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From: Nelson Winkless
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Subject: CM> A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
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Subject: CM: A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
As long as SDS has come up, perhaps the following recitation will be of
interest to the list. In an off-list discussion, a chap commented:
>The original Community Memory of 1971 was based on XDS 940 systems...
And that reviced a long-dormant memory...
...another Tymshare link. As I understand it, Tom O'Rourke and Dave Schmidt
worked for GE in Phoenix on development of a timesharing system. GE decided
not to go into the timesharing business for itself, so Tom and Dave set up
their own company, using the GE technology.
After the fellows made the commitment to their enterprise, moved to the Bay
Area, and established Tymshare Associates, GE changed its mind, and decided
to compete with them. (Not blackening GE here, just recalling the story as
we heard it.) Tymshare had no support, no computer system with which to
operate their business...and not much capital to do anything about it. A mad
scramble for survival ensued.
They knew that Max Palevsky's company, Scientific Data Systems (later
purchased by Xerox, and renamed Xerox Data Systems) was on the verge of
introducing a timesharing system, so they struck a deal. Our little company,
Communications Contact, Inc., actually prepared the flipchart presentation
that Tymshare used in pitching Bank of America on making a loan for the
purchase.
"On the verge" didn't mean the computer was available; it meant that SDS
thought they could build one, and having a real, live customer panting for
delivery of a system put some pressure on them to get the thing out. As time
passed, the pressure grew dramatically. Tymshare couldn't generate any
revenue without the system, and as the weeks and months flew by, they became
frantic.
When the system was finally delivered, the Tymeshare folks had a measure of
how much pressure they'd been applying to SDS; they reportedly found a
sandwich, among other things, inside one of the cabinets. The SDS fellows
working on the system had been yanked away from it the instant they admitted
it might be working, and the thing was shipped off to Los Altos from Santa
Monica without concern for niceties like clearing lunch, tools, and dropped
parts out of the machine.
Installation and debugging were agonizing activities for Tymshare. More
weeks passed before the system could be demonstrated to prospects, let alone
providing commercial service to customers. Then one day all of the Tymeshare
people were smiling after months of furrowed brows...it was the first time
the system had run for 24 hours without crashing.
The year must have been 1964...maybe '65...and I think the system was the
first SDS 940, later XDS 940.
As an incidental note, I have a reason to think kindly of Max Palevsky. That
may be worth another note some time.
--Nels Winkless
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nelson Winkless correspo@swcp.com
ABQ Communications Corporation Voice: 505-897-0822
P.O. Box 1432 Fax: 505-898-6525
Corrales NM 87048 USA Website: http://www.swcp.com/correspo
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:21:39 -0700
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From: werner@hipark.austin.isd.tenet.edu (Werner Uhrig)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Books regarding the social construction of computers?
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Subject: Re: CM> Books regarding the social construction of computers?
>>...interested...in computer development from a social
>> constructionists perspective.
>
> Try "The Psychology of the Computer Programmer"
after that, read Yourdon's "Decline & Fall of the American Programmer"
Yourdon Press, 1992, ISBN: 0-13-203670-3
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 08:13:43 -0700
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From: pvk@imv.aau.dk (Per Vingaard Klüver )
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links
>Does anybody know of a book that focuses on these types of connections
>between IBM specifically and the cold-war military machine? Or other big
>mainframe companies that are no longer around (Univac, etc.).
>
>Thanks, Louis Proyect
>
You may find some of interest in Kenneth Flamm: Creating the Computer:
Government, Industry and High Technology. 1988. He's got a list of military
sponsored pioneer computers. More specific on the Whirlwind-AN/FSQ7/SAGE is
Kent Redmond+ Thomas Smith: The Whirlwind. The History of a Pioneer
Computer.1980. The SAGE-projekt had an enormous impact on IBM's computer
department. According to Michael Williams: A History of Computing
Technology. 1985 most of the revenue of IBM's computer department came from
SAGE and the B-52-projekt. For a critical point of view I can recommend
Davis Noble: Forces of Production. 1986. And then of course there is a
speciel edition of the Annals for the History of Computing on SAGE, I think
it's no. 5/4 1983.
Regards
Per Kluver, Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark
pvk@imv.aau.dk
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:01:17 -0700
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From: Christian.Hess@sie.expreso.co.cr
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX
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Subject: XEROX
Hello, everyone. I have a question: I've heard the Macintosh's original
o.s. was modeled following research been done at XEROX PARC. Apple's
story is well known, but what happened to XEROX's project?
Christian Hess
E-mail: Christian.Hess@expreso.co.cr
WWW: http://www.expreso.co.cr/hess/
San Jose, Costa Rica
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 12:23:30 -0700
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From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein)
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Subject: CM> ARPANET node #1 at UCLA
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Subject: ARPANET node #1 at UCLA
Greetings. I have a variety of fond memories of that first Honeywell IMP,
which was in one of the original gray military-style cases with the four big
eyebolts on the top ("to make it easier to lower into submarines", was the
explanation we gave visitors). This IMP supported ARPANET host 1 (UCLA-ATS,
an 11/45) and later UCLA-SECURITY (an 11/70) [ARPANET host 129] (the second
port on the IMP was numbered mod-128 from the first).
We had a cardboard imp/daemon (complete with horns) on the top, and
a photo of "Robbie the Robot" standing next to the IMP, pasted on the
side of the case. A copy of that photo is probably still around.
While most IMP installations only had model 33ASR ttys, we also had a high
speed tape reader sitting on the top of the IMP, and a little carboard box
containing a metalized tty tape that contained a bootstrap (in practice,
this wasn't used except in the earliest days). The telco modem box that sat
next to and fed the IMP (56 Kbits/sec--the ARPANET backbone rate) was the
size of a refrigerator and full of large toroids and circuit cards.
We also had the old telco headsets and jack boxes that were originally used
for voice communications between the initial sites during the original
debugging.
When I have a chance I'll have to write up the story of what happened
when I tried to power down all the equipment in that 3rd floor machine
room one night during a period of bad power hits...
Coincidentally, I was just digging out material from my old
Lauren@UCLA-SECURITY address to locate the original announcement
of my "Jay Ward Film Festival" that I held in 1982 (with appearances
by June Foray, Bill Scott and others). I recently unearthed the only
audio tape of the event and have been gathering all the materials related
to it in preparation for making it available via the Web...
--Lauren--
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 12:27:47 -0700
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From: Ken_Pier.PARC@XEROX.COM
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
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Subject: Re: CM> A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
As an undergraduate I was an engineering aid on the SDS 940 project at
Berkeley. It did not become a "product" by SDS until, I recall, at least 1968.
The first 940 was created by modifying an SDS 930 commercial computer so that
it could be used for timesharing. The work was funded by ARPA and directed by
Dr. Mel Pirtle at UC Berkeley. Butler Lampson, Chuck Thacker, and L. Peter
Deutsch were among the young technical leaders of that project. When completed
and in service, the first 940 ran reliably in spite of its array of hairy
mechanical peripherals such as a hugh disk drive driven by hydraulic arms! It
served about forty or fifty users at a time, and also drove a graphics
subsystem that was quite capable for its time. I worked under the supervision
of Dr. George Miller on fast handprint recognition in 1968!
When SDS realized the value of the time sharing system, and that the software
was in the public domain, they came back to Berkeley and collected enough
information to begin manufacturing. A story that I remember, though it may be
apocryphal, is that because the SDS/XDS engineers did (in fact) not understand
the hardware modifications well, that 940s were manufactured by building 930s
and then revising them exactly as the Berkeley engineers had done to make a
940.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Ken Pier
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:02:22 -0700
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From: Richard Brodie (by way of davidsol@panix.com (David))
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX
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Subject: RE: CM> XEROX
There were a few Mac-like interfaces at Xerox in the late '70s when I
was there. Smalltalk of course is still around. Some of the research
went into a project called "STAR" which attempted to be an all-in-one
document publishing system. It was a bomb, as you probably remember.
Charles Simonyi and I went to Microsoft in 1981 and developed Microsoft
Word in the philosophy of PARC. This was well before Mac. (Of course,
don't forget the failed Apple "Lisa" that predated Mac!)
The amusing thing is that most of the silly little UI items that Apple
lost its suit against Microsoft over, claiming that Windows stole from
Mac, were all implemented at Xerox years before.
Richard Brodie RBrodie@brodietech.com +1.206.688.8600
CEO, Brodie Technology Group, Inc., Bellevue, WA, USA
http://members.gnn.com/rbrodie
Author of "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
See me on "Donahue" July 22, 1996
Do you know what a "meme" is? http://members.gnn.com/rbrodie/votm.htm
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:25:13 -0700
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From: rab@well.com (Bob Bickford)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX & What about Engelbart?
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Subject: Re: CM> XEROX
Christian Hess wrote:
>Hello, everyone. I have a question: I've heard the Macintosh's original
>o.s. was modeled following research been done at XEROX PARC. Apple's
>story is well known, but what happened to XEROX's project?
While I don't know the answer to your question, I can illuminate the
general area a little more. In the late 1970s Apple was one of several
companies that were involved in a project at Xerox that for some reason
I am remembering as "The Smalltalk Project" -- I doubt that was really
the name, but that seems to be the only label I have on the memory.
There was a book published with many of the results of the project, and
right up in the front was a note about the participating companies and
a comment to the effect that everybody understood the research was to be
shared freely. No, I don't recall if Microsoft was on the list. ;-)
Among the things developed were: graphical user interface, use of mice,
use of windows / panes, etc. etc.
Disclaimer: I didn't work for any of the companies, or for Xerox. I just
had lots of friends who did, and at one time a copy of that book....
[A note from moderator: Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1963.
Anyone out there have memories working with Doug, or seeing his famous Fall
1968 demonstration ("the mother of all demos") at the Civic Arena in San
Francisco?]
--
Robert Bickford "A Hacker is any person who derives joy from
rab@well.com discovering ways to circumvent limitations." rab'86
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I recognize that a class of criminals and juvenile delinquents has
taken to calling themselves 'hackers', but I consider them irrelevant
to the true meaning of the word; just as the Mafia calls themselves
'businessmen' but nobody pays that fact any attention." rab'90
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:31:53 -0700
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From: John Ahlstrom
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX & book.
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Subject: Re: CM> XEROX
There is an interesting story by Dave Liddle
about PARC and Star in the new book
Bringing Design to Software
Winograd,Terry, ed.
Addison-Wesley
ISBN 0201854910
which is a very interesting collection of papers.
John Ahlstrom jahlstrom@cisco.com
408-526-6025 Using Java to Decrease Entropy
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 07:27:14 -0700
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From: Nelson Winkless
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
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Sender: Nelson Winkless
Subject: Re: CM> A Fragment re: Tymshare & SDS
At 12:27 PM 06/11/96 -0700, Ken Pier commented:
>As an undergraduate I was an engineering aid on the SDS 940 project at
>Berkeley. It did not become a "product" by SDS until, I recall, at least 1968.
>
>The first 940 was created by modifying an SDS 930 commercial computer so that
>it could be used for timesharing.
As a direct participant in the work, Ken Pier knows better than I what the
origins of the 940 were. Tymshare's first system from SDS must have had some
other designation. It certainly gave SDS a vehicle for experimentation with
timesharing...with a desperate client breathing down their necks.
We need a Tymshare survivor to tell us. Neil Sullivan where are you?
--Nels Winkless
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nelson Winkless correspo@swcp.com
ABQ Communications Corporation Voice: 505-897-0822
P.O. Box 1432 Fax: 505-898-6525
Corrales NM 87048 USA Website: http://www.swcp.com/correspo
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 07:39:46 -0700
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From: Ron Smallwood
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
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Sender: Ron Smallwood
Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
When I attended a summer session for high school students in science (JESSI?),
we visited a SAGE site and got to walk through the computer. I EVEN GOT TO
HELP THE REPAIRMEN! They let me carry some tubes. They were so proud of their
16K, state of the art monsters (they had two). I was hooked and started on
my downward path to computer addiction and the ruin of my life. ;-)
At 08:04 AM 6/10/96 -0700, you wrote:
>
>[Note from moderator: I think we'd all like to know more about SAGE, so
>please send your recollections to the list.]
Ron Smallwood Instructor/Network Manager | P.O. Box 860 5504 Simpson Trail
Northern Lights College Fort Nelson Campus | Fort Nelson, B.C. V0C 1R0 Canada
Phone: (604)774-2741 (604)774-3038 Fax:(604)774-2750
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 07:47:39 -0700
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From: "Dave Paulsen" (by way of davidsol@panix.com (David S.))
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Emoticons
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Sender: "Dave Paulsen"
Subject: Re: CM> "Cerfing" the Net?
On 8 Jun 96 at 12:40, by way of davidsol@panix.com wrote:
> I started BBSing during the summer of 1990. At that time, emoticons were
> a very well-established form of communication, although everybody tended
> to stick to the basics, such as :) and =). The fancier emoticons were
> regarded as jokes, or didn't exist at all. Also, nobody called them
> emoticons. Come to think of it, as much as we used them, it's sort of
> odd that nobody ever gave them a name.
>
In the summer of '86 I had a file on my Fido BBS called smiley.txt that
originally came from an anonymous ftp site, might have been killer in Dallas. I
hadn't heard anyone call them anything but smilies until a few years ago when
emoticons seemed to pop up in the popular press.
_dave_(seemingly obligatory and definitely bandwidth wasting .sig)
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 07:57:52 -0700
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From: (Peter Capek)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> SABRE and SAGE
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Sender: (Peter Capek)
Subject: SABRE and SAGE
Larry Press wrote
> Did lessons learned on SAGE transfer to SABRE and the on-line banking
> apps.?
I don't know of any evidence for a substantial transfer, but there was
undoubtedly some. SAGE started earlier (late 1952 for the "final design"),
and was deployed several years before SABRE became operational. The bulk
of the (IBM) work on both systems was done in the Hudson Valley in New York,
but the systems were so different in goals and hardware, among other
things, that not much synergy is apparent. SAGE was truly a real-time
system, whereas SABRE was on-line, but with much less crucial response
time goals. But some of the folks who worked on those systems are
still around here, and I will ask.
The moderator wrote
[Note from moderator: I heard that a VP from IBM was on an American
Airlines flight and happened to sit next to a senior person at American
Airlines. The IBM person was working on SAGE and out of this conversation
talks were initiated on creating SABRE -- the automated reservation system
for American Airlines. Anyone have more details on this connection?]
This incident is recounted on page 572 of "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems."
"...A discussion in 1953 between an officer of American Airlines and
a senior IBM salesman, who fortuitously struck up a conversation on
a transcontinental flight, sparked a concerted attack on the diverse
requirements that seemed to be involved in meeting [the specific
needs of the airlines]. There followed shirt-sleeve interactions
between teams of technical experts, and by mid-1954 IBM had
allocated several engineers to a joint study with American Airlines.
The endeavor widened and in 1957 IBM's part was assigned to the
newly constituted Research organization. At this point the project
was named SABER (Semi-Automatic Business Environment Research), an
acronym later changed, for copyright reasons, to SABRE..."
One can't help but notice the similarity of the phrase for SABER to
that for SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment).
SABRE, incidentally, seems to have been an early, if not the first
system in which a crude variant of what we call threading today was
used. As messages arrived, data had to be read from disk to process
them. The processing was suspended until the data arrived from disk.
The book I quote from above is one of 4 which should be of interest to
many in this group. I will give exact citations tomorrow, but the
titles are
IBM's Early Computers
Memories that Shaped an Industry: Decisions Leading to IBM System/360
IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems
Building IBM
Emerson Pugh is the primary author of all four.
Peter Capek
IBM Research -- Yorktown Heights, NY
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:09:18 -0700
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From: mounier@msh-paris.fr (Mounier)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
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Jay Hosler: >> Never mind that SAGE constituted a classic example of the
>> mis-application of computers. If Soviet manned bombers had attacked
>> it would have been discovered that SAGE was close to useless as an air
>> defense system. Fortunately that didn't happen, which allowed a myth
>> to be perpetuated to the effect that it actually worked.
I am a historian, not a computer pioneer, and I do not know a priori
whether SAGE was an efficient, although gigantic, military system for
detecting Soviet bombers, or just an efficient money pump. Both
descriptions may be true altogether. We know for sure that SAGE and its
builders "sucked down billions of dollars from the U.S. defense budget".
The question is about SAGE's supposed unefficiency.
I would be very interested to know where Jay Hosler's assessment comes
from: Have you evaluated SAGE's efficiency? Is it possible to assess such a
military system, of which many parts are classified? Do you have references
(in particular, military studies) ? When you write that "SAGE was close to
useless as an air defense system", do you mean: Around 1958, when it
started operating - or years later, after it had been debugged, improved
and perfected? Why did you write "close to useless" and not just "useless"?
>> Under the guidance of the Pentagon that whiz-bang technological marvel
>> subsequently gave rise to the so-called command-control-communications
>> industry, which sucked down billions of dollars from the U.S. defense
>> budget and is still sucking, even though the Strategic Defense
>> Initiative finally seems to be fading away.
>More significantly, SAGE played an important part in the formation of the
>software industry. By training thousands of programmers at a time when
>>academic CS curricula didn't yet exist, SDC 'Systems Development
>Corporation >seeded the programmer population everywhere. Computer
>Sciences Corp and
>Scientific Data Systems (Palevsky's company that became Xerox Data
>Systems), are two examples of software companies that I
>know to have been heavy with SDC alumni, and there are many more. Even
>now, almost 37 years after I went to work for SDC, I commonly encouter SDC
>people doing senior technical work.
SDC is a classical example of military R&D spinoff. Historical facts are:
US labs, industry and military built the SAGE system; SDC and thousands of
programmers stemmed from it. Yet:
- SAGE's main purpose was to be an efficient air defense system, not a
cradle for software companies. We must assess it mainly on that ground.
- software companies would have developed without SAGE, too - although
differently, with different know-how, etc.
By the way, Scientific Data Systems was basically a computer manufacturer,
not a software company.
I will be very interested to read various points of view on these topics.
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
Centre Roland-Mousnier
CNRS - Paris IV Sorbonne
1 rue Victor-Cousin - 75005 Paris
T=E9l=E9phone : 33 (1) 46 33 49 86
=46ax : 33 (1) 40 46 31 92
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
http://www.reach.com/matrix/community-memory.html
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:21:55 -0700
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From: Steve Auerweck
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> PBS show "Triumph of the Nerds" Wed. night.
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Sender: Steve Auerweck
Subject: PBS show
PBS offers a three-hour documentary on computer history on Wednesday at
8 p.m. EDT. "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires in
Silicon Valley" is hosted by InfoWorld columnist "Bob Cringely."
| Steve Auerweck System Editor The Baltimore Sun |
| auerweck@clark.net |
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:32:08 -0700
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From: "Tronche Ch. le pitre"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX & JOSS
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Sender: "Tronche Ch. le pitre"
Subject: XEROX
I have read in a book (I can't remember which book right now) that
multi-windows and icons where present in a project by Rand Corporation
called JOSS whose purpose was to have a system that non-scientist
(lawyers may be) would be able to use. Also Alan Kay was aware of this
work when he came to Xerox.
+--------------------------+------------------------------------+
| | |
| Christophe TRONCHE | E-mail : tronche@lri.fr |
| | |
| +-=-+-=-+ | Phone : 33 - 1 - 69 41 66 25 |
| | Fax : 33 - 1 - 69 41 65 86 |
+--------------------------+------------------------------------+
| ###### ** |
| ## # Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique |
| ## # ## Batiment 490 |
| ## # ## Universite de Paris-Sud |
| ## #### ## 91405 ORSAY CEDEX |
| ###### ## ## FRANCE |
|###### ### |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:41:30 -0700
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From: "Michael S. Mahoney"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Xerox PARC, book.
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Sender: "Michael S. Mahoney"
Subject: Xerox PARC
For an account of Xerox's venture into personal computing at PARC and
its subsequent failure to exploit the results, see Douglas K. Smith and
Robert C. Alexander, _Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then
Ignored, the First Personal Computer_ (NY: William Morrow, 1988).
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=
Michael S. Mahoney Department of History Princeton University
mike@princeton.edu 303 Dickinson Hall Princeton, NJ 08544
phone 609-258-4157 fax 609-258-5326
WWW Home Page http://www.princeton.edu/~mike
o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o=
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 08:51:44 -0700
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From: Ming-Chang Wu
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Questions of the day.
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Hi Friends:
I am doing some independent study on the impact of computers on
large business geographical settlement. I am curious WHEN/WHICH
businesses adopt computers and decentralize their organizations. This is
important to me to identify the factors of recent urban decentralization,
meaning that urban employment continues to decline by using
telecommunication technologies to move out of high-rent downtown office
area.
Thanks.
************************************
Ming-Chang Wu
Candidate Master of Planning
U.S.C. School of Urban and Regional Planning
2677 Ellendale Pl.,#105 L.A. C.A. 90007 U.S.A.
Telephone: (213)737-4791
E-Mail Address: mingchan@scf.usc.edu
*************************************
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:04:58 -0700
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From: kanner@apple.com (Herb Kanner)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
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This is extremely ancient history (circa 1958) and also could be
interpreted as self-serving, so perhaps you don't want it. However, the
thought has been amusing me for years, so I'll throw it in for what it is
worth.
In 1958, I managed by sheer chutspah (sp) to wangle myself an assistant
professorship at the Institute for Computer Research, University of
Chicago. My graduate degree was in physics, and all that I knew about
computers was that I had written some programs for an IBM 650 in assembly
language, in Perlis's IT, which was perhaps the first high-level language
on earth, and in the Bell Labs interpreter, which simulated a three-address
machine.
The Institute was building a transistorized computer (one of the first, if
not THE first) on an Atomic Energy Commission contract. So here were these
guys soldering transistors, capacitors, and resistors onto printed circuit
boards and quaintly referring to the stuff as "hardware." This I found
very amusing; my concept of hardware was something you bought in a hardware
store. Because I was responsible for the initial programs for this machine,
e.g. a symbolic assembler, I thought it would be a cute idea to put a sign
on my office door that read "Software Department."
I'm sure that the term "software" did not radiate from my usage. But I'm
also fairly sure that it was not floating around the literature at that
time. So, at worst, I made an independent invention. It might be
interesting to try to track down the other origins of the term.
Herb
______________________________________________________________________
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Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:14:37 -0700
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From: davidsol@panix.com (CM Moderator)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Call for Submissions to CM Web Archive and others.
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Many of you have asked about the CM web site and when the archive will be
up and running. CPSR is currently recruiting a volunteer to help manage
this archive, and we hope to have someone online and a preliminary archive
running by early July. This archive will contain posts to this list,
pointers to online sources, archival documents, and bibliographies of
useful non-electronic materials (books, articles, etc.) All this will be
keyword searchable.
We ask you as subscribers to submit material, such as electronic archives,
you think have historical value so that we can integrate this on the CM
website. Many of you have already done so indirectly, by including
pointers to online resources in your posts. These will be placed in the
archive. Pointers, such as URLS, can be sent to the list. Longer archival
material should be sent to davidsol@panix.com and then it will be uploaded
to the web site and a note will be sent out stating that this material is
available on the web site at such-and-such address.
Over time, subscribers to this list will call for submissions relating to
their projects. CPSR asks that all such calls share material with the CPSR
web-site, since part of this list's mission is to make resources on the
history of cyberspace as widely available as possible. The long-term
vision is to evolve a site which will become an essential and valuable
research tool for the online community.
What follows is a post from Katie Hafner, calling for submssions to her site.
best,
db
Sender: Katie Hafner
Subject: Re: CM> Internet node #1 at UCLA
About a better history of the Net page...
In putting together the history of the Net book I mentioned a few posts
back, we were forced to leave a trove of wonderful material out--very
early sketches done by Larry Roberts when he was first designing the Arpanet
in '67, early papers on the IMPs and routing, a summary paper of Paul
Baran's work, photos of Lincoln Lab, where Roberts and so many other
Net pioneers got their start--and it got us to thinking that when the
book is published (it's due out in August) we should start building a Web
site that goes well beyond what Simon & Schuster will put together. That
is, make it the repository for, and link to, a vast archive of historical
material, some of which is already out there, but much of which is
still off-line. This list seems the perfect place to solicit
contributions for the site.
Katie
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:23:31 -0700
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From: peter@baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
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Subject: CM> The dawn of "emoticons" (smileys).
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Sender: peter@baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: The dawn of "emoticons" (smileys).
The first use of these icons that I'm aware of was on BBS systems in the
early '80s. They were very common on "social" BBSes, but whether they
leaked into the BBS community from Usenet or vice-versa I don't know. They
were always called simply "smilies" or occasionally "frownies", though the
:-( symbol was more often referred to as the "frowning smiley".
A lot of people using the BIX (Byte Information eXchange) BBS used to claim
they were invented there, and called them "bixies", but I'm sure the BBS
usage predates the creation of BIX.
I'd never heard them called "emoticons" until people started making these
pseudo-academic studies of the subject. I don't like the term... it sounds
like jargon for the sake of jargon... and I'm going to keep calling them
smileys. It just fits better.
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:07:47 -0700
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From: dawson@atria.com (Keith Dawson)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX & What about Engelbart?
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Sender: dawson@atria.com (Keith Dawson)
Subject: Re: CM> XEROX & What about Engelbart?
At 4:24 PM 6/11/96, David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com) wrote:
>Anyone out there have memories working with Doug, or seeing his famous Fall
>1968 demonstration ("the mother of all demos") at the Civic Arena in San
>Francisco?
I saw a 16-mm film of that famous demo in early 1971 at the Lawrence Rad-
iation Laboratory, as it was then -- now Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
(My memory says that the demo had occurred at the spring 1968 meeting,
the Spring Joint, not the fall, but I don't know this for a certainty.)
Engelbart told the story from his swivel chair (now *there* was a work-
station) of his vain efforts to get Ma Bell to cough up a 9600-baud link
from San Francisco to Palo Alto -- an unheard-of speed in those days of
course. He was accustomed to working at far higher bandwidth at SRI. In
the end he did the demo using a 2400-baud link, grumbling and apologizing
all the while, and absolutely blew the room away. Blew me away three years
later on film; strongly influenced the shape of my career, as I'm certain
it did many others.
______________________________________________________
Keith Dawson dawson@world.std.com dawson@atria.com
Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:17:16 -0700
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From: peter@baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Date of first Intranet - GEnet.
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Sender: peter@baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: CM> Date of first Intranet - GEnet.
> Certainly Honeywell was functional via GEnet, but GEnet would therefore
> aguably be earlier. (Unless someone can
> confirm if it was Honeywell IS that delivered the Intranet solution to GE
> in the first place.)
> It behaved not unlike a Unix function list sitting behind what we now call
> a firewall. This was operational in Australia
> about 1977-78. Its use was limited, but functional..
I recall playing on some sort of network at Honeywell Australia when my
father took me along to his office in Sydney in the early/mid '70s. The
only identification I can dredge up from my memory is "GE Terminet 300"
which may or may not be the brand of teletypewriter involved. Date would
have been between '72 and '78, more likely earlier than later.
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:30:32 -0700
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From: "'Laurence I. Press' lpress@ISI.EDU"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE --> SABRE?.
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
[~snip~]
>Did lessons learned on SAGE transfer to SABRE and the on-line banking
>apps.?
[~snip~]
I noted an article in an AA internal company newsletter about this last
question. The article follows:
Bill Stager
FROM: INTERACT 6 Jun 1996 12:45:41 FOR 21 DAYS.
TO: JW
SUBJECT: JETWIRE JUN0696
QD AAXPRAA
..............***************************..............
...........* *...........
........* J E T W I R E *........
....* *....
***************************
JETWIRE FOR THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 1996
PUBLISHED BY CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
MARION DESISTO, EDITOR
PLEASE POST ON ALL BULLETIN BOARDS
---COMPANY NEWS---
---FACTS, FIGURES AND OTHER STUFF---
IN 1953, A CHANCE MEETING OF TWO MR. SMITHS ON AN AA
FLIGHT RESULTED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DATA PROCESSING
SYSTEM THAT WOULD CREATE A COMPLETE PASSENGER RECORD
AND MAKE ALL THE DATA AVAILABLE TO ANY LOCATION
THROUGHOUT AMERICAN'S SYSTEM. THE OUTCOME OF THE
CONVERSATION BETWEEN C.R. SMITH, AMERICAN'S PRESIDENT,
AND R. BLAIR SMITH, A SENIOR SALES REPRESENTATIVE FOR
IBM, WAS A NOV. 5, 1959, ANNOUNCEMENT OF SABRE, A SEMI-
AUTOMATED BUSINESS RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 10:43:42 -0700
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From: davidsol@panix.com (David S. Bennahum)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> History in the making: CDA Overturned.
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This morning at 9:00 a.m. EST a three-judge panel in Philadelphia ruled
that the Communications Decency Act violates the principles of the First
and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and
overturned the law. A full text of the decision is available at:
http://www.vtw.org/speech/decision.html
It is a remarkable document [~250K] which describes the origins of the
Internet, and the technology which makes the Internet possible, in plain,
clear English. The word cyberspace is used extensively. The decision then
goes on to conclude that the CDA is unconstitutional in the United States.
What follows is an excerpt of the conclusion, written by Judge Dalzell:
"Cutting through the acronyms and argot that littered the hearing
testimony, the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide
conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that
conversation. As the most
participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the
highest protection from governmental intrusion.
True it is that many find some of the speech on the Internet to be
offensive, and amid the din of cyberspace many hear discordant voices that
they regard as indecent. The absence of governmental regulation of
Internet content has unquestionably produced a kind of chaos, but as one of
plaintiffs' experts put it with such resonance at the hearing:
What achieved success was the very
chaos that the Internet is. The
strength of the Internet is that
chaos.
Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the
First Amendment protects.
For these reasons, I without hesitation hold that the CDA is
unconstitutional on its face.
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA"
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:19:16 -0700
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From: "John K. Taber"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
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Sender: "John K. Taber"
Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
At 09:06 AM 6/12/96 -0700, Herb Kanner wrote:
[~snip~]
>I'm sure that the term "software" did not radiate from my usage. But I'm
>also fairly sure that it was not floating around the literature at that
>time. So, at worst, I made an independent invention. It might be
>interesting to try to track down the other origins of the term.
>
The way to settle this is to check thru old issues of CACM, which start in
the early 50s, Datamation, which used to be something else (I forget), and
the first years of Computerworld, which started publication in April 64.
Most of these archives were in the Stanford Univ library. Maybe they still
are.
About 15 years ago, I did read thru these archives, and as best I can
remember, your coinage of "software" is before any other I read.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:26:07 -0700
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From: "John K. Taber"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> SDS.
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
At 08:09 AM 6/12/96 -0700, Mounier wrote:
[snip]
>By the way, Scientific Data Systems was basically a computer manufacturer,
>not a software company.
>I will be very interested to read various points of view on these topics.
I'm certainly no expert on these matters, but SDS *was* the training
vehicle for programming at the urging of the military. I base my
opinion on Joan Greenbaum's book on programmers _In the Name of
Efficiency_, which I heartily recommend. The paragraphs on SDS are
"in passing", and are not a detailed historical account of SDS's
contracts to churn out programmers. But check out the footnotes.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:32:25 -0700
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From: Jay Hosler
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
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Sender: Jay Hosler
Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
>
> Jay Hosler: >> Never mind that SAGE constituted a classic example of the
> >> mis-application of computers. If Soviet manned bombers had attacked
> >> it would have been discovered that SAGE was close to useless as an air
> >> defense system. Fortunately that didn't happen, which allowed a myth
> >> to be perpetuated to the effect that it actually worked.
>
> I am a historian, not a computer pioneer, and I do not know a priori
> whether SAGE was an efficient, although gigantic, military system for
> detecting Soviet bombers, or just an efficient money pump. Both
> descriptions may be true altogether. We know for sure that SAGE and its
> builders "sucked down billions of dollars from the U.S. defense budget".
> The question is about SAGE's supposed unefficiency.
> I would be very interested to know where Jay Hosler's assessment comes
> from: Have you evaluated SAGE's efficiency? Is it possible to assess such a
> military system, of which many parts are classified? Do you have references
> (in particular, military studies) ? When you write that "SAGE was close to
> useless as an air defense system", do you mean: Around 1958, when it
> started operating - or years later, after it had been debugged, improved
> and perfected? Why did you write "close to useless" and not just "useless"?
Fair questions about this text, which is not mine. The quoted text
is itself a quotation, to which I was replying. Its author is Les
Earnest, who has made several contributions to this list.
I do know something about SAGE, however, from first-hand experience
In case your mind harbors any suspicion that it might have been
effective, I would be happy to argue with the opposition, on
fundamental grounds. SAGE was designed to defend against manned
bombers. Its overall defense value dropped as the manned bomber
threat gave way to an ICBM threat. It was never perfected, nor could
it have been; it is vulnerable to the same system-complexity
arguments that were later made against SDI by Parnas and others.
> >> Under the guidance of the Pentagon that whiz-bang technological marvel
> >> subsequently gave rise to the so-called command-control-communications
> >> industry, which sucked down billions of dollars from the U.S. defense
> >> budget and is still sucking, even though the Strategic Defense
> >> Initiative finally seems to be fading away.
>
> >More significantly, SAGE played an important part in the formation of the
> >software industry. By training thousands of programmers at a time when
> >>academic CS curricula didn't yet exist, SDC 'Systems Development
> >Corporation >seeded the programmer population everywhere. Computer
> >Sciences Corp and
> >Scientific Data Systems (Palevsky's company that became Xerox Data
> >Systems), are two examples of software companies that I
> >know to have been heavy with SDC alumni, and there are many more. Even
> >now, almost 37 years after I went to work for SDC, I commonly encouter SDC
> >people doing senior technical work.
>
> SDC is a classical example of military R&D spinoff. Historical facts are:
> US labs, industry and military built the SAGE system; SDC and thousands of
> programmers stemmed from it. Yet:
> - SAGE's main purpose was to be an efficient air defense system, not a
> cradle for software companies. We must assess it mainly on that ground.
By what rule of procedure are we permitted to measure SAGE only in
its own misguided terms? Our interest in this list is historical
rather than procedural. I was evaluating only SAGE's impact on the
development and dissemination of software technology. Comparatively,
its efficiency and effectiveness as an air defense system seems to me
better known and less interesting.
> - software companies would have developed without SAGE, too - although
> differently, with different know-how, etc.
And did, and were doing so, in parallel to SAGE, along many paths,
almost all of which were financed directly or indirectly by military
interests, as was almost all earlier computer work. SAGE gave them a
big boost.
> By the way, Scientific Data Systems was basically a computer manufacturer,
> not a software company.
A dubious distinction. SDS, and XDS after it, built operating
systems and software tool chains for their products. These were
essential to selling the iron, Many programmers were employed in
making them. These points can be important. If Apple had recognized
in 1984 that it was a sofware company, not just a hardware company,
perhaps it wouldn't have forgotten to port MacOS to Intel hardware,
and we would live in a different world.
Jay Hosler
jhosler@cisco.com
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:38:14 -0700
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From: Karen Clark (by way of davidsol@panix.com (David S.))
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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I read somewhere recently I believe
that the term "hacker" originally stood
for someone who was more of the expert
systems person, not the criminal or
curious break-in type. Does anyone
else know this to be true? or have
further info on the use of the term
hacker? thanks,kc.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:25:06 -0700
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From: Les Earnest
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Article on SAGE.
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Sender: Les Earnest
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE.
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn writes:
I am a historian, not a computer pioneer, and I do not know a priori
whether SAGE was an efficient, although gigantic, military system for
detecting Soviet bombers, or just an efficient money pump. [. . .]
Here is an article that I posted on comp.risks in 1989, based on my
experience in designing portions of SAGE while at MIT Lincoln Lab and
Mitre Corp. from 1956 to 1960. I continued working for Mitre on other
C3 systems through 1965.
-Les Earnest
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The grandfather of all command-control-communication (C3) systems was an
air defense system called SAGE, a rather tortured acronym for Semi-
Automatic Ground Environment. As I reported earlier in RISKS 8.74, some of
the missiles that operated under SAGE had a serious social problem: they
tended to have inadvertent erections at inappropriate times. A more
serious problem was that SAGE, as it was built, would have worked only in
peacetime. That seemed to suit the Air Force just fine.
SAGE was designed in the mid to late 1950s, primary by MIT Lincoln Lab,
with follow-up development by IBM and by nonprofits System Development
Corp. and Mitre Corp. The latter two were spun off from RAND and MIT,
respectively, primarily for this task.
SAGE was clearly a technological marvel for its time, employing digitized
radar data, long distance data communications via land lines and
ground-air radio links, the largest computer (physically) built before or
since, a special-purpose nonstop timesharing system, and a large
collection of interactive display terminals. SAGE was necessarily
designed top-down because there had been nothing like it before -- it was
about 10 years ahead of general purpose timesharing systems and 20 years
ahead of personal computers and workstations.
While the designers did an outstanding job of solving a number of
technical problems, SAGE would have been relatively useless as a defense
system if a manned bomber attack had occurred for the following reasons.
1. COUNTERMEASURES. Each SAGE system was designed to automatically track
aircraft within a certain geographic area based on data from several
large radars. While the system worked well under peacetime conditions,
an actual manned bomber attack would likely have employed active radar
jamming, radar decoys, and other countermeasures. The jamming would
have effectively eliminated radar range information and would even have
made azimuth data imprecise, which meant that the aircraft tracking
programs would not have worked. In other words, this was a air defense
system that was designed to work only in peacetime!
(Some "Band-aids" were later applied to the countermeasures vulnerability
problem, but a much simpler system would have worked better under expected
attack conditions.)
2. HARDENING. Whereas MIT had strongly recommended that the SAGE computers
and command centers be put in hardened, underground facilities so that
they could at least survive near misses, the "bean counters" in the Pentagon
decided that this would be too expensive. Instead, they specified
above-ground concrete buildings without windows. This was, of course,
well suited to peacetime use.
3. PLACEMENT. While the vulnerabilities designed into SAGE by MIT and the
Pentagon made it relatively ineffective as a defense system, the Air
Defense Command added a finishing blunder by siting most of the SAGE
computer facilities in such a way that they would be bonus targets!
This was an odd side effect of military politics and sociology, as
discussed below.
In the 1950s, General Curtis Lemays's Strategic Air Command consistently
had first draw on the financial resources of the Defense Department. This
was due to the ongoing national paranoia regarding Soviet aggression and
some astute politicking by Lemay and his supporters. One thing that Lemay
insisted on for his elite SAC bases was that they have the best Officers
Clubs around.
MIT had recommended that the SAGE computer facilities be located remotely,
away from both cities and military bases, so that they would not be bonus
targets in the event of an attack. When the Air Defense Command was
called upon to select SAGE sites, however, they realized that their people
would not enjoy being assigned to the boondocks, so they decided to put
the SAGE centers at military bases instead.
Following up on that choice, the Air Defense Command looked for military
bases with the best facilities, especially good O-clubs. Sure enough, SAC
had the best facilities around, so they put many of the SAGE sites on SAC
bases. Given that SAC bases would be prime targets in any manned bomber
attack, the SAGE centers thus became bonus targets that would be destroyed
without extra effort. Thus the peacetime lifestyle interests of the
military were put ahead of their defense responsibilities.
SAGE might be regarded as successful in the sense that no manned bomber
attack occurred during its life and that it might have served as a
deterrent to those considering an attack. There were reports that the
Soviet Union undertook a similar experimental development in the same time
period, though that story may have been fabricated by Air Force
intelligence units to help justify investment in SAGE. In any case, the
Russians didn't deploy such a system, either because they lacked the
capability to build a computerized, centralized "air defense" system such
as SAGE or had the good sense not to expend their resources on such a
vulnerable kluge.
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:36:56 -0700
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From: Akira
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
On Wed, 12 Jun 1996, Karen Clark wrote:
> Sender: Karen Clark
>
> I read somewhere recently I believe that the term "hacker" originally stood
> for someone who was more of the expert systems person, not the criminal or
> curious break-in type. Does anyone else know this to be true? or have
> further info on the use of the term hacker? thanks,kc.
Yep, it's the truth. The origin is more fully explained in Steven Levy's
excellant 1984 book of the same name. It's more or less required reading
for anyone who's interested in hacker culture and, to a large extent, the
origins of the culture of cyberspace.
The term (if I remember Levy's book correctly) originated in the MIT
Artificial Intelligence lab well before computers were even invented. It
was used to describe a member of the school's model railroad club
(coinicdentally the group that produced MIT's first true hackers) who
spent significant portions of time playing with the complicated system of
switches underneath the carefully sculpted diaorama that the trains ran
on. Many people have drawn analogies between this system of switches and
the phone system (which basically also runs on switches, or did in the
1960s anyway) that these same hackers later explored with ferver.
Regards,
Rich
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:42:07 -0700
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From: peter@baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
The term "hacker" in the computer community in the '70s (when I started getting
into things) referred to someone who was in love with computers and very good
at dealing with them almost intuitively without the benefit of formal training.
A "hack" was a clever trick, often inelegant but sometimes near divine in its
perfection. It could be applied to people as well as computers, in which case
you were generally dealing with a technically impressive practical joke rather
than a solution to a problem.
The best popular media presentation of hackers of this period that I'm familiar
with is in the movie "real genius".
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:20:43 -0700
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From: Jay Hosler
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> SDS.
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Subject: Re: CM> SDS.
> Sender: "John K. Taber"
>
> >By the way, Scientific Data Systems was basically a computer manufacturer,
> >not a software company.
[~snip~]
I'm sure you mean SDC (System Development Corp, Santa Monica, a
spinoff of Rand in 12/57), not SDS (Scientific Data Systems, founded
by Max Palevsky in about 1960).
SDC's training activities were at their height from mid-1958 until
early 1961, when they began to taper off. During that time SDC
started two or more classes of 35 or so students per month. The
training curriculum strted with an 8-week course in basic programming
techniques and the Q-7. Nearly all the trainees succeeded;
pre-employment screening was effective. Perhaps 40% of the graduates
went on to a 4-month course in SAGE system internals, then to a 2-yr.
tour of duty at a SAGE site in some unpleasant place (usually cold).
After I went through the training curriculum I was saved from this
assignment by an invitation to join the training staff. From
mid-1959 until mid-1961 I taught in the 4-month course, as part of a
staff of about a dozen. Another dozen or so trainers taught the Q-7
course. I estimate the total number of Q-7 programmers trained
by SDC during 1958-1961 to be at least 2500.
Jay Hosler
jhosler@cisco.com
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:29:21 -0700
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From: Severo@poonhill.com (Severo Ornstein) (by way of davidsol@panix.com (David S.))
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE. (fwd)
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Sender: Severo@poonhill.com (Severo Ornstein)
Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE. (fwd)
Yes, like Les (whom I know from later contacts at the Stanford AI lab and
elsewhere - Hi Les!) I cut my teeth at Lincoln Lab on SAGE. Of course in
retrospect Les' evaluation is quite correct, but clearly neither of us
believed it back then. In those days (1950's) it wasn't so apparent that
SAGE was such a silly thing. Many people worked in good faith believing
that it was not only exciting and ground-breaking (which it was), but also
important. Stalinism was fresh in everyone's minds, the Berlin blockade and
the wall were essentially current, and in general the Soviets appeared a
much more serious threat than they seem now. Furthermore no one knew then
what we now know about computer capability, and many prominent people made
what later has proved to be fools of themselves with overly optimistic and
naive predictions. Hindsight is easier than foresight and people tend to
forget the circumstances of the times - political, technological, and
otherwise. We are certainly wiser now, all of us, but few were so wise
then.
I myself was certainly naive, both technically and politically, when I
joined Lincoln in 1954. But I became disillusioned with military projects -
initially mostly because of their wastefulness and seeming uselessness -
and when MITRE was formed to carry on with SAGE, I opted to stay at Lincoln
where more general computer research was going on. Soon after that I joined
the research computer (TX-2) group at Lincoln and shortly started working
with what soon became the LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) group -
which developed the first serious personal computer - dedicated to medical
research. That group left Lincoln en masse when Lincoln refused to accept
NIH sponsorship for our work (nominally because their overhead and
supervisory mechanisms differed from those of the Air Force).
Despite all this, the fact remains that SAGE was the first "big"
application attempted and like it or not, Lincoln bred a generation of the
best and brightest in computers without whom, it's fair to say, computers
would not be where they are today.
Severo
Severo M. Ornstein
Poon Hill
2200 Bear Gulch Road
Woodside, CA 94062
Phone: 415-851-4258 Fax: 415-851-9549
E-mail: Severo@Poonhill.com
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:33:49 -0700
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From: Les Earnest
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Earliest transistorized computer
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Subject: Earliest transistorized computer
Herb Kanner writes that at the University of Chicago in 1958:
The Institute was building a transistorized computer (one of the first, if
not THE first) on an Atomic Energy Commission contract.
I recall seeing a Bell Labs transistorized computer at the Eastern
Joint Computer Conference in Philadelphia in 1954, which I suspect was
the earliest.
Sometime around 1956 or '57, a group at MIT Lincoln Lab completed the
TX-0 transistorized computer and there may have been some other such
machines in between. TX-0 was a 16 bit machine and originally had
just four instructions: Add, Store, Unconditional jump and "Operate."
The Operate instruction interpreted the address field as microcode,
which could do various register transfers and conditional skips.
With a bit of programming, that was enough to do anything imaginable.
TX-0 also had a CRT display and a lite pen.
Ken Olsen, who was one of the engineers on the TX-0 project and on a
fancier 37 bit machine called TX-2, later used the knowledge derived
from those projects as a basis for founding Digital Equipment Corp.,
whose first computer (PDP-1) resembled TX-0 and whose later PDP-6 and
DecSystems 10 and 20 resembled TX-2.
-Les Earnest
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:37:03 -0700
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From: "Edward Sargisson"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
[~snip~]
Briefly the original hackers were an outgrowht of The Model Railway
Club (TMRC) at MIT in the '60s. They spent inordinate amounts of
time getting their software to run faster and better using all kinds
of tricks. Later were the hardware hackers of the '70s who did the
same with software. This eventuated (inter alia) in the Apple II
computer. In the '80s were the game hackers who used their
creativity to create amazing (for the time) games. Classic example
of this is Sierra On-Line, Broderbund and the now defunct Sirius
software.
--------------------------------------
Edward Sargisson +64 9 625 4513
105 Hendry Ave
Hillsborough Permanent Address:
Auckland
NEW ZEALAND
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:39:52 -0700
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From: Irv Luckom
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE --> SABRE?.
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE --> SABRE?.
[~snip~]
Although I was not directly involved in SAGE, I worked for IBM in
Kingston, NY during the period that SAGE systems were being built there.
I was in an advanced projects group whose job was to figure out what we
were going to do with the SAGE, and other advanced, technology in other
applications. One of these other areas was airline reservation systems.
Several individuals from the Kingston area, and several individuals from
the IBM group at Poughkeepsie, NY were assigned to flesh out that idea as
part of an organization known as the Advanced Systems Division that was
located in a building on High Street in Poughkeepsie. From this the
project became know as Project High. The airplane story may, or may not,
be true (I have no direct knowledge) but IBM was working on such a system
before the airplane conversation. The joint effort with American Airlines
started at least a year to 18 months after the creation of Project High.
______________________________________________________________________
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Moderator: Community Memory
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:42:35 -0700
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From: Irv Luckom (by way of davidsol@panix.com)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software" & "bug."
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Sender: Irv Luckom
Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
I'm afraid Herb did make an independent invention, but considerably after the
fact. In 1950, I was a member of a committee at the Census Bureau that was
responsible for evaluting, and later recommending purchase, of a computing
machine that had been put together by Profs. Eckerd and Mauchly at the
University of Pennsylvania that they called "Eniac". When the Census
Bureau and the Department of the Air Force later in 1950 decided to
contract with Eckerd & Mauchly for the first two such machines to be
delivered to us, the contract called for them to train us to program these
machines. The first programming class was conducted by their director of
programming, Grace Murray Hopper. Grace's office had the same sign that
Herb's had, namely Software Dept. By the way, Grace is also usually
credited with using the word "bug " to describe why the Aiken machine at
Harvard shut down during an overnight run. There was literally an insect
in one of the relays.
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:45:30 -0700
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From: rab@well.com (Bob Bickford)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> XEROX & What about Engelbart?
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Sender: rab@well.com (Bob Bickford)
Subject: Re: CM> XEROX & What about Engelbart?
In a previous message, I wrote:
>Among the things developed were: graphical user interface, use of mice,
>use of windows / panes, etc. etc.
: : :
And the moderator appended:
>[A note from moderator: Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1963.
The way this comment was juxtaposed makes it appear that at least our
friendly moderator misread my remarks as implying that I thought that
the mouse was invented in that same Xerox/PARC project that Apple
participated in. Obviously, I was very unclear, as I know very well
that the mouse *LONG* predates that project. Indeed, so do the other
elements that I named. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that the
development included the *use* of all these elements. Anyone on this
list who worked on the "STAR" project, care to comment further?
--
Robert Bickford "A Hacker is any person who derives joy from
rab@well.com discovering ways to circumvent limitations." rab'86
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:48:35 -0700
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From: rab@well.com (Bob Bickford)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Sender: rab@well.com (Bob Bickford)
Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
You probably saw my .signature block on a recent message. If you go read
Steven Levy's 1984 book _Hackers: The Heros of the Computer Revolution_
you'll get a very good set of insights into the origins of the term.
However, in 1986 when I helped organize the 2nd Hacker's Conference, I
felt that Steven had not been as clear as was needed about just what the
term means: after reading his book, you still don't come away with a short
and simple definition. So I worked on it during the conference and by the
end I had thought it through to the point where I had the definition that
appears in my .signature below. I wrote an article for _Microtimes_ magazine
that was published in the December 1986 issue entitled "Hacker Defined", and
a followup article that appeared a couple of years later in Microtimes (and
which is also available on my web page as http://www.well.com/~rab/ayah.html
if you want to read it) in Microtimes and which has also been widely
reprinted, including in _Tricks of the Internet Gurus_. My definition has
also been
quoted in at least three degree-related papers, one for a PhD if I recall
correctly. In certain crowds, it's passed into "meme" status, which is of
course gratifying to me.
For several years I was rather passionate about the issue, vigorously fighting
back whenever some clueless journalist type would take the self-labelling of
some juvenile delinquent or criminal type as "hacker" without bothering to
question the term. Nowadays I just object calmly when it happens and don't
put so much energy (and vitriol) into trying to set things straight; it seems
that the journalists who are educable I've already reached, and the rest will
never listen to me anyway. The real problem appears to be editors who aren't
bright enough to know or care about the origins and real meanings of the
terminology they use.
Oh well, that soapbox is worn out anyway. Read Steven's book, have a look
at my web page (and the links at the bottom), form your own opinions.
--
Robert Bickford "A Hacker is any person who derives joy from
rab@well.com discovering ways to circumvent limitations." rab'86
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I recognize that a class of criminals and juvenile delinquents has
taken to calling themselves 'hackers', but I consider them irrelevant
to the true meaning of the word; just as the Mafia calls themselves
'businessmen' but nobody pays that fact any attention." rab'90
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:51:39 -0700
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From: eggplant@inlink.com (Matthew Murphy)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
I believe the term "hacker" was first coined at MIT. It refered to someone
who had great ability in creating cool "hacks". "Hacks" were anything from
realy cool programs to realy great pranks, such as the exact replica of a
campus police car that was built on top of the dome of one of the buildings
on campus.
______________________________________________________________________
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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:54:31 -0700
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From: magjo@tema.liu.se (Magnus Johansson)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> More books on the social construction of computing.
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Hi, community-memory editor. I really like the kind of facts I get from
people on the list, but since my main focus i Swedish computer history, I
suppose I'll have to post some questions relating to Scandinavia. For the
time being I'll just stick to adding some books for the constructivist
list.
--------
Thanks for many good tips on books to read on the social construction of
computers. Though, from an STS (science-technology-society studies)
perspective, I would like to make a small comment.
As many of the suggested books are written by people within the computing
community, they can serve a double purpose. First, we can learn a lot from
them. Second, we can use them to study the social construction of
computing, as these people are the very same ones who are engaged in THE
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF COMPUTING. Thats why Gates, Negroponte, Stoll are
some of the most interesting books on computing from last year, and e.g.
texts by Kay, Rheingold, Engelbart, Bush, Wiener, Weizenbaum are good ones
from older days.
Get my point? Feeling Wallraffed? I would really like to discuss this!
Bruce Henstell gave some good STS-titles last week. Here are some more:
Susan Leigh Star "The cultures of computing" (Blackwell, 1995)
Harry Collins "Artificial experts" (MIT Press, 1990)
Donald Mackenzie "Inventing accuracy" (MIT Press, 1990)
James R. Beniger "The control revolution" (Harvard University Press, 1986)
Jasanoff/Markle/Petersen/Pinch "Handbook of science and technology studies"
(SAGE, 1995)
Nyce & Kahn "From Memex to Hypertext" (Academic Press, 1991)
Dahlbom & Mathiassen "Computers in context" (NCC Blackwell, 1993)
Tracy Kidder "The soul of a new machine" (Little, Brown & Co, 1981)
John Hendry "Innovating for failure" (MIT Press, 1989)
Theodore Roszak "The cult of information" Pantheon Books, 1986)
there are many, many more where a constructivist perspective is at hand
/Magnus
Magnus Johansson
dept of Technology and Social Change
Linkoping University
S-581 83 Linkoping
Sweden
tel: + 46 (0)13 282954 fax: + 46 (0)13 284461 e-mail: magjo@tema.liu.se
http://klio.tema.liu.se/MITS/
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:57:18 -0700
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From: Barry.Mahon@DM.KRINFO.CH
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE - SDC
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Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE - SDC
Just to add to the post from Pierre Mounier-Kuhn;
SDC was also the developer of one of the first online information retrieval
systems, a program suite subsequently called ELHILL, developed for the
National Library of Medicine in the early 70's. SDC itself developed this
as Orbit, a commercial online database host, which was sold in the 80's to
Mr Robert Maxwell and then in 1994 to a France Telecom subsidiary Questel,
so the French connection is made
In the same context Lockheed Corp. did a similar job for NASA at about the same
time and it was subsequently commercialised as Dialog, owned to-day by
Knight-Ridder.
Bye, Barry
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:00:35 -0700
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From: darrahs@bucks.edu (SUSAN DARRAH)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
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Sender: darrahs@bucks.edu (SUSAN DARRAH)
Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
I'm not sure how accurate the account is in Steve Levy's book
_Hackers_ (1984?), but he does discuss the difference between
the way the word "hacker" was used in the "early days" and then
later: evidently, calling someone a hacker *was* high praise,
just as later on "hacker" had to do with less admirable talents.
on the other hand, I'm *not* a computer person at all, and my
information about the history of computing in general comes from
more or less "popular" accounts, which leads me to a question:
how accurate are accounts like Levy's and Markoff?
i teach writing, and i *use* computers. i am really interested
in the contributions to this list. thanks. susan darrah
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:03:12 -0700
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From: Les Earnest
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Xerox PARC, book.
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Sender: Les Earnest
Subject: CM> Xerox PARC, book.
Michael S. Mahoney writes:
For an account of Xerox's venture into personal computing at PARC and
its subsequent failure to exploit the results, see Douglas K. Smith and
Robert C. Alexander, _Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then
Ignored, the First Personal Computer_ (NY: William Morrow, 1988).
Actually, Xerox's failure to exploit its own technology substantially
predated the creation of PARC and is not covered in that book. In
1961 some people at MIT Lincoln Lab bought a Xerox office copier and
added a CRT connected to the TX-2 computer, which turned it into a
very nifty xerographic computer printer that could print both text and
line-drawing graphics. It worked like a charm, aside from the fact
that the fuser would occasionally get too enthusiastic, causing the
paper to catch fire.
>From that time on, none of the TX-2 users printed on the available
electromechanical printer, called a Lincolnwriter. Xerox
representatives were invited to see how the new printer worked and it
was pointed out to them that it would be a valuable addition to their
product line. They said "Very interesting!" and left, never to be
heard from again.
If Xerox had developed and marketed a xerographic printer at that
time it would have dominated the market. Because they didn't, IBM
and others continued to develop ever more elaborate and kludgy line
printers, while for applications requiring graphics printing, a number
of printer-plotters using expensive electrographic paper and much
slower line plotters were developed. Most of that could have been
avoided if Xerox had exploited their basic technology.
Xerox had another chance to dominate the printer market in the late
1960s when they developed a xerographic raster printer that was
functionally equivalent to a laser printer but that used a CRT as the
light source. That printer was developed as part of a rather
expensive facsimile system called LDX (Long Distance Xerography),
which turned out to be a failure in the marketplace. They didn't
seriously try selling the printer portion of the system for computers.
Meanwhile, Xerox did develop and market a xerographic computer printer
that used electromechancially-positioned optical masks to form images
on the drum, much like the phototypsetters of that era. It was a slow
and unreliable monstrosity that also deservedly died in the
marketplace. The Xerox engineers apparently didn't understand that
computers could do a much better job of forming graphical images for
printing than their mechanical system.
Given that the LDX product had failed and that Xerox had a warehouse
full of them, in 1971 Bob Taylor of Xerox PARC generously arranged for
some of the printers to be given to university computer groups for use
as printers. For that application they were redesignated as the XGP
(Xerox Graphics Printer). That stimulated a lot of creative work in
the universities and caused many of the remained XGPs to be sold.
I believe that the success of the XGP, even though it was not designed
as a computer printer, helped convince Xerox management that there was
a market for laser printers, which they proceeded to develop and sell.
However, all of the systems that they developed at that time were very
high performance and quite expensive.
In 1980 I got tired of waiting for Xerox to produce a reasonably
priced xerographic printer and decided to do a Silicon Valley startup.
We had been experimenting with raster printing in the Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Lab for nine years at that point, using both
the XGP and a laser printer donated by Canon. A graduate student
named Luis Trabb Pardo had recently demonstrated a microprocessor
image generator that would be relatively inexpensive to manufacture,
so he and I formed Imagen Corporation and license the Stanford
technology with the goal of turning it into a product that would later
be called "desktop publishing."
We decided to use the original Sun microcomputer board as the driver
in our image processor. The Sun workstation had also been developed
in our lab, principally by another grad student named Andy
Bechtolsheim. That was a year or two before Sun Microsystems was
formed.
Unfortunately we were unable to attract any venture capital -- the VCs
had never heard of laser printers and evidently didn't believe in them
even though we had a working model that did beautiful printing. We
did manage to (painfully) bootstrap to success using money from
friends and family but were unable to grow very fast in that mode.
After we got past $10 million in annual sales by the third year using
only word-of-mouth advertising, the VCs finally figured out that we
were onto something and invested in us in 1984, around the time that
Apple and H-P entered the laser printer market. Having been unable to
grow fast enough to challenge the big guys, Imagen got its butt
kicked. Had the VCs put up money earlier it would have been a more
interesting battle.
In summary, beginning in the early 1960s Xerox had printing technology
that could have been used to dominate the computer printing market,
but they ignored that opportunity until around 1970, when they brought
out an electromechanical printer that was functionally inferior to a
facsimile printer that they had already developed. They finally
succeeded in the market with high performance laser printers in the
late 1970s, though according to some accounts they never did recover
their development costs. Finally, after early introductions of
desktop publishing systems by Imagen, Symbolics and QMS, Apple and H-P
came to dominate the laser printer market, which now is turning into a
commodity market with a larger number of participants.
It is worth noting that from the 1950s through the 1970s Xerox was
often cited by business analysts as one of the best managed companies
in the world. One of the primary reasons given for their success was
their "focus" on the core business. While it is true that the copier
business turned into a "cash cow" for a time, it has since become
abundantly clear that Xerox missed several major business
opportunities. To some of us, their "focus" looked more like tunnel
vision.
-Les Earnest
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:06:25 -0700
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From: davidsol@panix.com (CM Moderator)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Questions of the Day.
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Sender: arcady@well.com (Marc Weber)
Subject: Roots of Hypertext?
It seems I'm always reading vague allusions to ancient "hypertext-like"
techniques; a number of histories mention the Talmud and that annotations
there are hypertext-like, but give no specifics as to when they appeared,
where, etc. People also make vague allusions to cross-referencing and page
numbering appearing in 16-18th century texts. Does anyone have any specific
pointers for this stuff, or know if there were even earlier uses of
cross-linking? On clay tablets, whatever?
Arcady & Arcady Press arcady@well.com
Europe: (33) 50 39 90 94 USA: (1) 415 974-9489
2 bis, Rue de Souville, 350 Sharon Park Dr., Ste C-23
74240, Gaillard, France Menlo Park CA 94025, USA
***
Reaching me when in Boston:
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Sender: LESPEA@muze.com (Leslie Pearson)
Subject: DecSystem Machines
What ever happened to the old Dec System (DEC-10, DEC-20) machines out
there?
The first time sharing computer I ever used was a brand new Dec System 20
in the fall of 1980, as a freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
They supposedly traded in their old Dec 10, but were able to keep it and
sell it for parts!
Leslie Pearson
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:54:31 -0700
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From: thvv@BEST.COM (Tom Van Vleck)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
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Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software"?
I may have met Herb about 1960, and perhaps picked up the term "software,"
when I visited the University of Chicago and the group
soldering away on MANIAC III. The name MANIAC III leads me to believe
that it was a descendant of the Los Alamos MANIAC II machine.
I was a member of a group of high school students building a transistorized
computer in a suburban Chicago basement, and we were awed by the chance
to visit a real research lab. A story of our project is available at
http://www.best.com/~thvv/boyd.html
Adam Justin Thornton has written up a great report on the Rice University
Computer, also descended from MANIAC II, at
http://www.princeton.edu/~adam/R1/r1rpt.html
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:59:57 -0700
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From: Nelson Winkless
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> The PBS Show: Slipping a memory cog
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Sender: Nelson Winkless
Subject: CM: The PBS Show: Slipping a memory cog
The Cringely PBS documentary of the Personal Computing biz that
aired last night will doubtless stir conflict. I stirs confusion in my
mind.
I attended only one West Coast Computer Faire...in April 1977, at Nourse
Auditorium in San Francisco. Jim Warren toured the exhibit floor on roller
skates, Jef (sic) Raskin commented that this was either the beginning of
something significant or the end of something significant, but the show
represented a major breakpoint of some kind.
We passed out hundreds of pounds of free personal Computing Magazines at our
booth (depressing David Ahl, who was selling copies of Creative Computing at
his booth, and needed the cash to cover the cost of the show...David did
just fine later), and I distinctly - perhaps incorrectly - recall seeing the
Apple II in its marvelous plastic case, which became a major symbol of the era.
Notes in my journal for the time refer to the show, our booth, etc...but not
to the Apple, so I've no documentation. Still, I see the Apple booth up at
the end of a row, near the street and the front door, in the mind's eye.
In fact, I wrote an article (called " A Fine Faire" I think) reporting on
the meeting, and I think it contained a picture of folks at the Apple booth,
showing the splendid new computer.
Yet, the PBS documentary referred repeatedly to the 1978 Computer Faire as
the event where the Apple II was introduced.
Heck, I don't clearly remember things that happened yesterday, and I can't
remember where the old magazines are, to check the article. Gotta search.
Cringely et al must be right.
And yet...
--Nels Winkless
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:05:37 -0700
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From: "Bruemmer, Bruce" (by way of davidsol@panix.com)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE - SDC
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Sender: "Bruemmer, Bruce"
Subject: Re: CM> IBM/military links: SAGE - SDC
If anyone wants to get their hands dirty with actual historical documentation,
I have posted a 1966 SDC memo listing "Documents on the Developmental History
of SAGE" at:
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/burros/sdcbib.htm
I haven't a clue about how many of the documents in the memo have
disappeared off the
face of the earth. However, I suspect they give some insight about how those
working with SAGE perceived the system at the time. [I think there is a
tendency
to confer kludge status to many "early" inventions that really had
pioneering aspects to
them.]
CBI holds some records of SDC by virtue of having the Burroughs Corporation
Collection. The inventory of the SDC records may be found at:
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/inv/burros/sdc.htm
Bruce H. Bruemmer
Archivist
Charles Babbage Institute
103 Walter Library
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:11:21 -0700
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From: "G.Vinton Palazzolo"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> More books on the social construction of computing.
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Sender: "G.Vinton Palazzolo"
Subject: Re: CM> More books on the social construction of computing.
As a student in STS, I would like to add my $.02 worth:
1. Turkle, Sherry. 1984. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.
[Turkle studied various adult, adolescent, and juvenile computer
subcultures: hackers, AI scientists, early pc users, even schoolchildren
learning LOGO and kindergarteners playing with computer toys (like
Merlin...remember those?) She looks at how the computer is an evocative
object, an object-to-think with, and and object for organizing reality.]
2. The journal SIGNS had a special issue (Autumn 1990) on computing
("From Hard Drive to Software: Gender, Computers, and Difference) that
includes:
Paul Edwards, "The Army and the Microworld: Cmputers and the Politics of
Gender Identity."
Sherry Turkle & Seymour Papert, "Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and
Voices with the Computer Culture."
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:15:02 -0700
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From: "Julian Reitman"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> SAGE, SABRE & Teleregister
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Sender: "Julian Reitman"
Subject: SAGE and SABRE
The discussion on the influence of SAGE on the development of SABRE
has so far omitted the fact that there was an airline passenger
reservations system the employed complex communications computer
interfaces before SABRE, though of much less complexity. However,
numerous airlines had Teleregister systems in the 1950s which
processed remote events over communications links and produced
replies.
The Teleregister systems have not been given much coverage in the
history of computing. Part of that is that as commercial systems they
did not leave an achive of government reports for historians to
explore.
My experience as a system design engineer with Teleregister from 1955
to 1961 showed that there were working commercial
communications/computer systems in operation not only in the United
States but with overseas links as well.
When I left Teleregister in 1961 to join United Aircraft there were
other engineers with SAGE and IBM military experience around. Our
collective conclusion was that from the point of view of an
operational reliable system Teleregister had been successful, while
SAGE had not.
As Teleregister management decided that they could not compete
against IBM, there was a drift of the key engineers from Teleregister
to IBM SABRE. The critical experience for the design of
communications and computer linkages was derived from the many
engineers that produced the commercial Telregister systems.
Julian Reitman
______________________________________________________________________
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:20:22 -0700
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From: davidsol@panix.com (CM Moderator)
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> 3 posts on the word "hacker."
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
On Thu, 13 Jun 1996, SUSAN DARRAH wrote:
> I'm not sure how accurate the account is in Steve Levy's book
> _Hackers_ (1984?), but he does discuss the difference between
> the way the word "hacker" was used in the "early days" and then
> later: evidently, calling someone a hacker *was* high praise,
> just as later on "hacker" had to do with less admirable talents.
Well...sorta.
Today there's really many uses for the word "hacker," and while they all
mean more or less the same thing (someone who's very adept with
computers) they all carry very different connotations.
The government sees hackers as a threat, period. They constantly fear
some hacker somewhere will pull a "Wargames" scenario and start World War
III from their bedroom. It's an almost patently absurd idea but very few
people in the government know anything practical about computers. I
personally think it's just a military and COINTELPRO budget
justification, but then again I'm a conspiracy theorist.
The popular media portrays hackers as a threat, but most of their
information comes from the government and the people who bust
"threatening" hackers. Since most of the public gets most of their
information from these sources, they have a negative connotation of the
word "hacker." There's an important distinction to draw here, though;
while the government portrays hackers as evil forces who hold the
country's information infrastructure hostage becase of their potential
for harm, the popular press usually paints them as misguided pranksters
who break technical laws in harmless ways. Most reporters I know often
accuse the government of overstating its case, and rightly so.
Within the hacker communites, the word "hacker" is a badge of honor. If
you walk into such an encalve and call yourself a hacker as an unknown,
you will meet responses ranging from mocking derision to outright
hostility. To be a hacker is an honor that must be earned. The only
question is how that honor is earned.
There is still very much a hacker community in the sense of the word
inspired at MIT -- clever people who use their computers to do new and
clever things. Most of them write shareware. They have BBSs and
newsgroups and are proud of the fact that their efforts have been used as
ammunition in the war on productivity in offices everywhere.
Then there's the more underground hacker community. Here there are two
marks of being a hacker. The first is the ability to go through a piece
of software and remove the personalization requirements (the part of the
program that requires you to enter your name and serial number, and then
displays these at start-up); expert hackers can then insert their own
information in to these feilds. These are the so-called "elite" of the
underground. The second is more in line with the original sense of the
word, but in this case deals with the ammassment of information that, for
whatever reason, is contraband. This can range from a banned book to a
stolen corporate file to a list of user logins and passwords.
Contrary to popular belief, caches of such information are usually used
as tropheys and treasure piles. Hackers tend to be information packrats
by nature, and rarely use such information to do harm. While it
ceratinly happens, the destructive hacker (as opposed to the curious,
exploratory hacker) is a rare breed by anyone's figures, including the
government's though you'll never get them to admit it.
Regards,
Rich
"An ancient eastern proverb says: I complained because I had no shoes;
then I met a man who had no feet. For the 90's: I complained because I
had no PowerMac; then I met a man who used Windows."--Cloyce Sutton
===============================================================================
Rich "Akira" Pizor pizor@lclark.edu http://www.lclark.edu/~pizor
*** I use PGP -- finger or http for public key ***
Sender: The Seeker
Subject: CM> Origins of the word hacker? (fwd)
Regarding Susan Darrah's question of the origin of the word hacker and
Steven Levy's accuracy of his recounting of those early days:
As best I can tell from reading other accounts of those early days of
computing I thing Levy is very accurate. His account of the people and
happenings in his book 'Artificial Life' is very accurate.
The word "hacker" still has positive connotations. What most people think
of as hackers, I (and alot of other people) consider "crackers", or people
who crack open secure systems. In fact, I consider myself to be a hacker
of the old school. When I code a program, I try to design it as elegantly
and efficiently as possible. This is the use that Steven Levy attributes
to it when discussing the students ( `.-| the Spock emoticon ) at MIT
back in the sixties.
As far as John Markoff goes, I am no longer sure how reliable he is
anymore. I base this on a reading of his book Takedown and a comparison
of it with Jonathon Littman's book, The Fugitive Game. I question any
journalist's integrity when they start talking law suit over the reporting
of their alleged actions in a given situation. I suggest you read both
books and make up your own mind.
Greg Dickinson
Sender: Jay Hosler
Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
>
>
> Sender: "Edward Sargisson"
> Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word hacker?
>
> [~snip~]
>
> Briefly the original hackers were an outgrowht of The Model Railway
> Club (TMRC) at MIT in the '60s. They spent inordinate amounts of
> time getting their software to run faster and better using all kinds
> of tricks.
"Hacker" was used at SDC before 1960. It was pejorative, applied to
programmers who favored ad-hoc techniques and placed expedience and
results higher than style and maintainability.
Jay Hosler
jhosler@cisco.com
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______________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:25:46 -0700
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From: "L. Peter Deutsch"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> SDS 940 & Tymshare
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I recently saw the following posting:
[~snip~]
>> As a direct participant in the work, Ken Pier knows better than I what the
>> origins of the 940 were. Tymshare's first system from SDS must have had some
>> other designation. It certainly gave SDS a vehicle for experimentation with
>> timesharing...with a desperate client breathing down their necks.
>>
>> We need a Tymshare survivor to tell us. Neil Sullivan where are you?
>>
>> --Nels Winkless
I don't know what list this was posted on or how to follow up; I hope you
do. Please post the following as a follow-up.
I was one of the principal designers and implementors of the operating
system developed at Project Genie at U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s for the
modified SDS 930 that was the research predecessor of the SDS 940.
The 24-bit 940 was the only time-sharing machine ever sold by SDS. Around
the time that Xerox acquired SDS (a little later, I think), Xerox brought
out its own line of 32-bit machines, the Sigma series, of which the Sigma 7
and 9 were time-sharable; but the SDS (later XDS) 940 hardware and operating
system were better-designed and more cost-effective, and I believe the 940
actually outlived and (for time-sharing) may even have outsold the Sigma
line.
SDS originally had no plans to manufacture time-sharing hardware. ARPA,
which funded the 940 work, persuaded SDS to do so by guaranteeing some
orders from ARPA research sites. SDS set the price of the 940
preposterously high so that they would recover their engineering costs even
if they only sold a few; but the machines turned out to be very popular
(with ARPA projects, at least), and SDS made huge profits from them. In
fact, the great profitability of this line contributed substantially to
Xerox' interest in buying SDS.
L. Peter Deutsch
______________________________________________________________________
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Moderator: Community Memory
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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:04:43 -0700
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From: "John K. Taber"
To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org"
Subject: CM> Origins of the word "software" & "bug."
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Subject: Re: CM> Origins of the word "software" & "bug."
At 08:42 AM 6/13/96 -0700, Irv Luckom wrote:
>[snip] By the way, Grace is also usually
>credited with using the word "bug " to describe why the Aiken machine at
>Harvard shut down during an overnight run. There was literally an insect
>in one of the relays.
I have to protest this etymology of "bug". True, a moth *was* found in
a relay, and was taped into the log and recorded as an instance of a
literal "bug" (the moth caused the relay to fail). A facsimile of the
log was printed in one of the issues of the Annals of the History of
Computing. And as I remember the article, it was Grace Hopper who
sent the photo of the log to the Annals.
However, the etymology of "bug" meaning defect is much more interesting
than its supposed origin in an insect. I've read that Thomas Alva
Edison used the word in his diary to describe a mechanical defect long
before the Aiken relay computer.
My understanding is that "bug" is derived from a Welsh word from which
we get our "bogy"man. The essence of the word is something menacing.
In time, it came to mean insane but still menacing, as in Bugsy Moran.
There were several gangsters nicknamed "bugsy" because of their
insane murderousness.
>From "insane and menacing" engineers picked it up to describe mechanical
and electrical defects. And eventually, programmers adapted it to
software defects.
"Bug" still retains its root feeling of insane and somehow menacing.
I don't remember where I got all this, but I think it is
correct.
To return to Hopper's moth. "Bug" had to already exist in the programmers
vocabulary for anybody to tape it into the logbook. It's a word that
bothers people because it derives from three unrelated sources. 1st,
from Welsh as explained, but forgotten by most of us. 2nd, from
English meaning insect. And 3rd, from Bulgar, reputed for all sorts
of disgusting practices like buggery. Basically, we know meaning 2,
and have forgotten the others, thus its meaning as defect bothers
us. We want to look for the insect when we should look for the bogyman.
______________________________________________________________________
Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com)
Moderator: Community Memory
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