On Sun, Dec 29, 2024 at 3:37 PM Warren Toomey wrote: > On Sat, Dec 28, 2024 at 05:53:48PM -0900, Royce Williams wrote: > > Someone I know is seeking the original version of an internal Bell > Labs > > memo from 1974 titled "Webster's Second on the Head of a Pin" by > Morris > > and Thompson. The topic appears to be related to improving the speed > of > > lookups or search. It's cited in a few papers as "Unpublished > Technical > > Memo, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 1974." All I can find online > > is citations. Any leads appreciated! > > Doug McIlroy sent me a copy, it's now here: > > > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/TechReports/Bell_Labs/PinheadWebster.pdf > > Thanks Doug! > And many thanks from me and my colleague as well, Doug! For future searchers, what follows is selected (unique) front matter from the memo, rewrapped slightly for Mailman width. Title - Webster's Second on the Head of a Pin Date - July 15, 1974 TM - 74-1271-13 Other keywords - words, text compression Author Location Extension Robert Morris MH 2C-524 3878 Ken Thompson MH 2C-523 2394 Charging case - 39199 Filing Case - 39199-11 ABSTRACT We used the list of words from Webster's Second Unabridged Dictionary (without definitions) as a test case for special purpose text compression techniques. We compressed it by a factor of 4.52 to 1. The 234,932 words originally occupied 2,486,781 bytes and were compressed into 549,388 bytes. The size of the decoding program is 1356 bytes. The initial characters of a word that agreed with the initial characters of the previous word were dropped and replaced by a code. Common suffixes were also coded. Finally, a variable-length code was used. Pages Text 6 Other 0 Total 6 -- Royce