The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* Re: [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)
@ 2020-01-12 13:43 Doug McIlroy
  2020-01-12 16:56 ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2020-01-12 13:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Mention of elevators at Tech Square reminds me of visiting there
to see the Lisp machine. I was struck by cultural differences.

At the time we were using Jerqs, where multiple windows ran
like multiple time-sharing sessions. To me that behavior was a
no-brainer. Surprisingly, Lisp-machine windows didn't work that
way; only the user-selected active window got processor time.

The biggest difference was emacs, which no one used at Bell
Labs. Emacs, of course was native to the Lisp machine and
provided a powerful and smoothly extensible environment. For
example, its reflective ability made it easy to display a
list of its commands. "Call elevator" stood out amng mundane
programmering actions like cut, paste and run.

After scrolling through the command list, I wondered how long
it was and asked to have it counted. Easy, I thought, just
pass it to a wc-like program. But "just pass it" and "wc-like"
were not givens as they are in Unix culture.  It took several
minutes for the gurus to do it--without leaving emacs, if I
remember right.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* Re: [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)
@ 2020-01-12 22:25 Doug McIlroy
  2020-01-12 22:40 ` Kevin Bowling
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2020-01-12 22:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

>> After scrolling through the command list, I wondered how
>> long it was and asked to have it counted. Easy, I thought,
>> just pass it to a wc-like program. But "just pass it" and
>> "wc-like" were not givens as they are in Unix culture.
>> It took several minutes for the gurus to do it--without
>> leaving emacs, if I remember right.

> This is kind of illustrative of the '60s acid trip that
> perpetuates in programming "Everything's a string maaaaan".
> The output is seen as truth because the representation is
> for some reason too hard to get at or too hard to cascade
> through the system.

How did strings get into the discussion? Warner showed how
emacs could be expected to do the job--and more efficiently
than the Unix way, at that: (list-length (command-list-fn)).
The surprise was that this wasn't readily available.

Back then, in fact, you couldn't ask sh for its command
list. help|wc couldn't be done because help wasn't there.

Emacs had a different problem. It had a universal internal
interface--lists rather than strings--yet did not have
a way to cause this particular list to "cascade through
the system". (print(command-list-fn)) was provided, while
(command-list-fn) was hidden.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)
@ 2020-01-10 17:27 Noel Chiappa
  2020-01-10 20:18 ` Angelo Papenhoff
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2020-01-10 17:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Clem Cole

    > when she found out the elevators were hacked and controlled by the
    > student's different computers, she stopped using them and would take
    > the stairs 

It wasn't quite as major as this makes it sound! A couple of inconspicuous
wires were run from the 'TV 11' on the MIT-AI KA10 machine (the -11 that ran
the Knight displays) into the elevator controller, and run onto the terminals
where the wires from the 'down' call buttons on the 8th and 9th floors went.

So it wasn't anything major, and there was really no need for her to take the
stair (especially 8 flights up :-).

The code is still extant, in 'SYSTEM; TV >'. It only worked (I think) from
Knight TV keyboards; typing 'ESC E' called the elevator to the floor
that keyboard was on (there's a table, 'ELETAB', which gives the physical
floor for each keyboard).

The machine could also open the locked 9th floor door to the machine room
(with an 'ESC D'), and there some other less major things, e.g. print screen
hardcopy. I'm not sure what the hardware in the TV-11 was (this was all run
out of the 'keyboard multiplexor'); it may have been something the AI Lab
built from scratch.

      Noel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-01-22  7:30 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-01-12 13:43 [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) Doug McIlroy
2020-01-12 16:56 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-12 17:21   ` markus schnalke
2020-01-12 20:25   ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 20:32     ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-12 20:34     ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-12 20:40       ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 20:44         ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-12 21:03           ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 21:37             ` [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) [ really I think efficiency now ] Jon Steinhart
     [not found]               ` <CAEoi9W4fXLaTRM1mv4wnVbifCFBEw_iKL9cds8ds-FBRTwM-=g@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                 ` <CAEoi9W6LedGGjWPO=ZgZzVdGLqs8drhqcWkvA_DfKTOtMDgegQ@mail.gmail.com>
2020-01-13 23:46                   ` Dan Cross
2020-01-14 23:17                     ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-18 15:45                     ` Michael Parson
2020-01-18 18:45                       ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-18 18:59                         ` Michael Parson
2020-01-18 20:31                           ` Adam Thornton
2020-01-21 21:57                       ` Derek Fawcus
2020-01-22  7:21                         ` arnold
2020-01-22  7:29                           ` Tyler Adams
2020-01-12 21:41           ` [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) Bakul Shah
2020-01-12 21:47             ` Jon Steinhart
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-01-12 22:25 Doug McIlroy
2020-01-12 22:40 ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-10 17:27 Noel Chiappa
2020-01-10 20:18 ` Angelo Papenhoff

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).