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From: Toby Thain <toby@telegraphics.com.au>
To: Steve Johnson <scj@yaccman.com>, Lars Brinkhoff <lars@nocrew.org>,
	Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net>
Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] God vs god (was Upper/Lower at DEC)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 10:37:16 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <906baa19-11b4-fef3-d853-0b17eb200c3f@telegraphics.com.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3c4014d4052d6fe3afb97bdb89a4d22c7854059b@webmail.yaccman.com>

On 2019-10-13 11:17 p.m., Steve Johnson wrote:
> There is a story (or perhaps an urban legend) that mainframe computers
> used all upper case, in spite of research showing lower case was easier
> to read, because some executive said "But with all lower case, we can't
> spell God's name right".  Anybody able to put some reality behind that?
> 


Did nobody explain to the executive that, like printed typography for
FIVE HUNDRED years prior, that a character set with lower case would
include BOTH CASES? (Typographic research doesn't claim that lower case
_only_ is easier to read, and there are reasons to believe it is not.)



> Steve
> 
> 
> 
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     From:
>     "Lars Brinkhoff" <lars@nocrew.org>
> 
>     To:
>     "Arthur Krewat" <krewat@kilonet.net>
>     Cc:
>     <tuhs@tuhs.org>
>     Sent:
>     Sat, 12 Oct 2019 04:24:01 +0000
>     Subject:
>     Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Curious Question from the Ether about use of Upper
>     and Lower case at DEC
> 
> 
>     Arthur Krewat wrote:
>     > While BAH was more involved in PDP-10 stuff, I wonder what her take is
>     > on this.
> 
>     I don't think there ever was a lower case "pdp10" on the machines.
>     From what I see, it was "PDP-10", "decsystem10", "DECSYSTEM 20",
>     or "DECSYSTEM 2020".
> 


      reply	other threads:[~2019-10-14  9:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <012a01d5808f$0e56dcf0$2b0496d0$@net>
2019-10-12  0:04 ` [TUHS] Fwd: Curious Question from the Ether about use of Upper and Lower case at DEC Clem cole
2019-10-12  0:23   ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-12  4:24     ` Lars Brinkhoff
2019-10-12  5:35       ` Angelo Papenhoff
2019-10-13 22:17       ` [TUHS] God vs god (was Upper/Lower at DEC) Steve Johnson
2019-10-14  9:37         ` Toby Thain [this message]

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