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* [COFF] Re: [TUHS] Fwd: How did Bell Labs start to work on Project MAC?
@ 2023-01-24 18:47 Noel Chiappa
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2023-01-24 18:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: coff, crossd; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Dan Cross

    > From Acceptable Name <metta.crawler@gmail.com>:

Gmail has decided this machine is a source of spam, and is rejecting all email
from it, and I have yet to sort out what's going on, so someone might want to
forward anything I turn up to this person.

    >> Did Bell Labs approach MIT or was it the other way around?

I looked around the Multics site, but all I could find is this: "Bell
Laboratories (BTL) joined the Multics software development effort in November
of 1964"

  https://multicians.org/history.html

I did look through IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 14, no. 2,
listed there, but it's mostly about the roots of CTSS. It does have a footnote
referring to Doug, about the timing, but no detail of how Bell Labs got
involved.

I have yet to look at the oral history things from Corby, etc which may answer
this in passing.

I'll ask Jerry Saltzer if he remembers; he's about the only person left from
MIT who was around at that point.

     >> Did participating in Project MAC come from researchers requesting
     >> management at Bell Labs/MIT

At MIT, the 'managers' and the researchers were the same people, pretty much.
If you read the panel transcript in V14N2, Fano was the closest thing to a
manager (although he was really a professor) there was at MIT, and he talks
about not wanting to be involved in managing the thing!

      Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 2+ messages in thread

* [COFF] Re: [TUHS] Fwd: How did Bell Labs start to work on Project MAC?
@ 2023-01-24 21:09 Noel Chiappa
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2023-01-24 21:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: coff; +Cc: jnc

    > I have yet to look at the oral history things from Corby, etc which may
    > answer this in passing.

This page:

  https://multicians.org/project-mac.html

links to oral history transcripts from Fano, Corby and Dennis. Only Corby:

  https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107230
  http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102658041-05-01-acc.pdf

was involved when Bell Labs came on board; he says:

  "Also Bell Labs was interested in acquiring a new computer system. They were
  quite intrigued and sympathetic to the notions of what we were doing. Ed
  David down there was a key figure and an old friend of Fano. They decided to
  become partners (pg. 16, CHM interview)

  "Simultaneously, Bell Labs had been looking for a new computer acquisition
  for their laboratories, and they had been scouting out GE. There was some
  synergism: because they knew we were interested they got interested. I think
  they first began to look independently of us. But they saw the possibility
  of our developing a new operating system together." (pg. 43, CBI interview)

So it sounds like it was kind of a mutual thing, aided by the connection
between Fano and David (who left Bell after Bell bailed on multics).

	Noel


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 2+ messages in thread

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2023-01-24 18:47 [COFF] Re: [TUHS] Fwd: How did Bell Labs start to work on Project MAC? Noel Chiappa
2023-01-24 21:09 Noel Chiappa

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