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Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 06:53:20 -0700
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From: Alan Bawden To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org" Subject: CM> Discussion Lists, ITS, SF-LOVERS.
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Sender: Alan Bawden Subject: ITS
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 23:27:21 -0700
From: Richard Brodie ... ITS of course stood for Incompatible Time Sharing. Boy, was that a
hideous user interface! As I remember, you logged off by typing
U. And there was a common command, I forget what it did even,
but you invoked it by entering Esc, Ctrl-X, and the period key. Yuck!
*Cough*
That's not ITS you are describing, but rather the ITS command processor and
machine language debugger, DDT. $^X. was the command that killed the
current job. It was with tears in my eyes that I finally shut down the
last ITS machine at MIT in 1990, and I still accidentally type those DDT
commands to my Unix shell. So watch it with those "Yuck!"s, buster, some
of us have some fond memories of those (admittedly arcane) commands!
In those days, you created a mailing list by editing a LISP file (I
unfortunately forget its name--anyone remember?) containing a list name
and a list of recipients.
I would have said that the name of the ITS mailer COMSAT's mailing list
file was:
DSK:.MAIL.;NAMES >
And I would have explained that this wasn't actually a Lisp file at all, it
just had a syntax that strongly resembled Lisp. (In fact, I often wished
that it really -was- Lisp, so that it would be easier to write little
MacLisp programs to process it!) But you said:
Then anyone could send mail to SF-LOVERS@MIT-DMS and the system would
forward it to everyone on the list, just like today! I posted a system
message announcing the existence of the list and it quickly grew out of
control.
And MIT-DMS ran a -different- mailer than the rest of the ITS machines. I
don't recall what it's mailing list file was called. The DMS mailer
("COMSYS") was written in MUDDLE, which qualifies as a dialect of Lisp, and
probably its mailing list file was indeed written in MUDDLE notation.
I believe it was the release of a movie, either the first Star Trek or
Superman, that made the list volume swell to the point where the
sysadmins noticed. There was some discussion of the appropriateness of a
non-work-related list, but it remained although it converted to
digest-only form.
Hmmm... I'll bet it was the original Star Wars movie -- I think that came
out at about the right time. By the time I started subscribing to
SF-LOVERS it was already being digested and it was distributed from MIT-AI
not MIT-DMS. (The moderator at the time was Roger Duffy, who was a
graduate student at the AI Lab, which perhaps explains a move to the AI
Lab's machine.) As the membership continued to grow, even the single
nightly distribution of the digest got to be too much of a drag on a
single mailer, so the list was divided up between the various ITS machines.
For a couple of hours every night, every machine on the 9th floor of
Technology Square was working on SF-Lovers -- and no other mail was being
delivered.
Alan Bawden
Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU
(formerly Alan@MIT-AI)
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 07:04:33 -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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Sender: Les Earnest Subject: CM> Earliest transistorized computer
Earlier I wrote:
> I recall seeing a Bell Labs transistorized computer at the Eastern
> Joint Computer Conference in Philadelphia in 1954, which I suspect was
> the earliest.
Les Kitchen responds:
A book I have claims that the first transistorized computer, the
MEG, was completed in 1956 by the Manchester group. Les Earnest
may well be right in his recollection about the priority of Bell
Labs (it would make sense after all). However the writer of
that chapter, Trevor Pearcey, was one of the designers of CSIRAC
(aka CSIR Mark I) in the late 40s, so his claim would carry some
weight.
Let me qualify my remark. The early Bell Labs transistorized device
that I saw in 1954 may not have been a proper computer in the modern
sense. I think it was a plugboard-programmable calculator linked to
an IBM card reader/punch, similar to an IBM product of that era that
used vacuum tubes.
-Les Earnest
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From: Alan Bawden To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org" Subject: CM> Discussion Lists, ITS, SF-LOVERS.
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Sender: Alan Bawden Subject: ITS
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 23:27:21 -0700
From: Richard Brodie ... ITS of course stood for Incompatible Time Sharing. Boy, was that a
hideous user interface! As I remember, you logged off by typing
U. And there was a common command, I forget what it did even,
but you invoked it by entering Esc, Ctrl-X, and the period key. Yuck!
*Cough*
That's not ITS you are describing, but rather the ITS command processor and
machine language debugger, DDT. $^X. was the command that killed the
current job. It was with tears in my eyes that I finally shut down the
last ITS machine at MIT in 1990, and I still accidentally type those DDT
commands to my Unix shell. So watch it with those "Yuck!"s, buster, some
of us have some fond memories of those (admittedly arcane) commands!
In those days, you created a mailing list by editing a LISP file (I
unfortunately forget its name--anyone remember?) containing a list name
and a list of recipients.
I would have said that the name of the ITS mailer COMSAT's mailing list
file was:
DSK:.MAIL.;NAMES >
And I would have explained that this wasn't actually a Lisp file at all, it
just had a syntax that strongly resembled Lisp. (In fact, I often wished
that it really -was- Lisp, so that it would be easier to write little
MacLisp programs to process it!) But you said:
Then anyone could send mail to SF-LOVERS@MIT-DMS and the system would
forward it to everyone on the list, just like today! I posted a system
message announcing the existence of the list and it quickly grew out of
control.
And MIT-DMS ran a -different- mailer than the rest of the ITS machines. I
don't recall what it's mailing list file was called. The DMS mailer
("COMSYS") was written in MUDDLE, which qualifies as a dialect of Lisp, and
probably its mailing list file was indeed written in MUDDLE notation.
I believe it was the release of a movie, either the first Star Trek or
Superman, that made the list volume swell to the point where the
sysadmins noticed. There was some discussion of the appropriateness of a
non-work-related list, but it remained although it converted to
digest-only form.
Hmmm... I'll bet it was the original Star Wars movie -- I think that came
out at about the right time. By the time I started subscribing to
SF-LOVERS it was already being digested and it was distributed from MIT-AI
not MIT-DMS. (The moderator at the time was Roger Duffy, who was a
graduate student at the AI Lab, which perhaps explains a move to the AI
Lab's machine.) As the membership continued to grow, even the single
nightly distribution of the digest got to be too much of a drag on a
single mailer, so the list was divided up between the various ITS machines.
For a couple of hours every night, every machine on the 9th floor of
Technology Square was working on SF-Lovers -- and no other mail was being
delivered.
Alan Bawden
Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU
(formerly Alan@MIT-AI)
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 07:04:33 -0700
Reply-To: cpsr-history@Sunnyside.COM
Originator: cpsr-history@cpsr.org
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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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Sender: Les Earnest Subject: CM> Earliest transistorized computer
Earlier I wrote:
> I recall seeing a Bell Labs transistorized computer at the Eastern
> Joint Computer Conference in Philadelphia in 1954, which I suspect was
> the earliest.
Les Kitchen responds:
A book I have claims that the first transistorized computer, the
MEG, was completed in 1956 by the Manchester group. Les Earnest
may well be right in his recollection about the priority of Bell
Labs (it would make sense after all). However the writer of
that chapter, Trevor Pearcey, was one of the designers of CSIRAC
(aka CSIR Mark I) in the late 40s, so his claim would carry some
weight.
Let me qualify my remark. The early Bell Labs transistorized device
that I saw in 1954 may not have been a proper computer in the modern
sense. I think it was a plugboard-programmable calculator linked to
an IBM card reader/punch, similar to an IBM product of that era that
used vacuum tubes.
-Les Earnest
______________________________________________________________________
