[TUHS] Re: the Courier font family and nroff history

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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[looping the groff list back in]

At 2024-03-23T11:37:51-0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > "BI" fonts can, it seems, largely be traced to the impact
> > of PostScript
> 
> There was no room for BI on the C/A/T. It appeared in
> troff upon the taming of the Linotron 202, just after v7
> and five years before PostScript.

Thanks, Doug!  I'm pleased to be corrected here.

> > Seventh Edition Unix shipped a tc(1) command to help you preview
> > your troff output with that device before you spent precious
> > departmental money sending it to the actual typesetter.
> 
> Slight exaggeration. It wasn't money, It was time and messing
> with film cartridges, chemicals, and wet prints. You could buy a
> lot of typesetter film and developer for the price of a 4014.

The scars on my waist from crashing dot-com startup "belt-tightening"
must be showing...the great thing about recurring expenses, no matter
how small, is that you can issue edicts about them and Be Seen To Be
Doing Something...

One source says that the Tektronix 4014 listed (at some point during its
sales life) at $8,450, though the Computer Museum of Amsterdam has much
higher estimates (albeit without tying their dollar figures to a
calendar year, which increases the fuzz even more).

Still, USD 8,450 in 1979 is over USD 36,000 today.[1]

Do you happen to remember _when_ the CSRC got its 4014?  About what
year?  Did Joe Ossanna have access to one early enough to use it in aid
of troff development?  (I don't see a man page for tc(1) in the Sixth
Edition manual.)

Something else I'm not clear on is whether staff had Teletype terminals
in their personal offices (before the Blit), or if people _had_ to go to
the Unix room to use the system.  (Steve Johnson has a wonderful story
of how DMR faithfully used a Model 37 at home long after its vogue years
until mechanical wear combined with the Unix CLI's unforgiving nature
finally proved too much even for him...)[2]

Even after reading many reminiscences of (1)127 life, including
Kernighan's recent memoir, I admit that my fanciful reconstructions of
it are likely as naturalistic as that time Banksy took over the
Simpsons' couch gag to depict daily life in Korean animation studios...

As always I appreciate your patience with the febrile notions of a guy
who Wasn't There.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
[2] https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/tuhs@tuhs.org/message/ESWNMKHN2P2H54GRFSWYPOXQ4GJIPSCY/

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