[TUHS] non-UNIX timesharing at Bell Labs ca 1972?

[TUHS] non-UNIX timesharing at Bell Labs ca 1972?

[Dan Halbert]

In 1972, while in high school, I went to an Intel seminar on the 8008. 
There I met a Bell Labs scientist who gave me a sample 8008 and invited 
me for a visit at some NJ Bell Labs facility. That group had a 
timesharing system of some kind, but it was not Unix. I was also given a 
Bell Labs speech synthesis kit after meeting one of the speech 
scientists who happened to be in on the same Saturday. I have searched 
my attic but can't find further details. Would any of you alumni recall 
what this other timesharing system might have been?

Dan

Re: [TUHS] non-UNIX timesharing at Bell Labs ca 1972?

[Mike Knell via TUHS]

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> On 11.03.2021, at 16:26, Dan Halbert <halbert@halwitz.org> wrote:
> 
> In 1972, while in high school, I went to an Intel seminar on the 8008. There I met a Bell Labs scientist who gave me a sample 8008 and invited me for a visit at some NJ Bell Labs facility. That group had a timesharing system of some kind, but it was not Unix. I was also given a Bell Labs speech synthesis kit after meeting one of the speech scientists who happened to be in on the same Saturday. I have searched my attic but can't find further details. Would any of you alumni recall what this other timesharing system might have been?

Not an alumnus of anything (alas, I am far too young and not clever enough), but maybe this was GECOS? (Origin of the name of the pw_gecos field in UNIX..)

Mike

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Re: [TUHS] non-UNIX timesharing at Bell Labs ca 1972?

[Dan Halbert]

On 3/11/21 12:00 PM, Mike Knell wrote:
>> On 11.03.2021, at 16:26, Dan Halbert <halbert@halwitz.org> wrote:
>>
>> In 1972, while in high school, I went to an Intel seminar on the 8008. There I met a Bell Labs scientist who gave me a sample 8008 and invited me for a visit at some NJ Bell Labs facility. That group had a timesharing system of some kind, but it was not Unix. I was also given a Bell Labs speech synthesis kit after meeting one of the speech scientists who happened to be in on the same Saturday. I have searched my attic but can't find further details. Would any of you alumni recall what this other timesharing system might have been?
> Not an alumnus of anything (alas, I am far too young and not clever enough), but maybe this was GECOS? (Origin of the name of the pw_gecos field in UNIX..)
>
> Mike
I do not think it was GECOS. I have a memory of him demonstrating a 
FOCAL- or BASIC-esque language running on some commercial minicomputer, 
but it was not one of those and I don't think it was a DEC machine. 
Perhaps it was not timesharing, but he showed it to me from his office 
terminal, I think, not in a lab.