[TUHS] UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[TUHS] UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[segaloco via TUHS]

Good morning folks, something I've been pondering on this morning is the potential close connection between UNIX development and Teletype interfacing designs as the 70s and 80s marched on.  Seeing as Teletype was a part of the Bell System (albeit a little less obviously in marketing than it's kin), was there any sort of official rapport between folks working on UNIX and those designing subsequent Teletypes, Dataspeed terminals, etc?

For instance, would there have been any influence an up-and-coming Teletype design would've had on developments in the UNIX tty drivers, or would particulars of UNIX tty drivers "rub off" on specifics of terminals being developed?  Or were those units so distant from one another that there would've been little cross-talk between teams?  Granted, an argument could be made for specifically avoiding any significant knowledge of internals, that way UNIX tty driver folks don't potentially paint into a Teletype corner and vice versa.  Still, with the tightly integrated nature of Bell System R&D, manufacturing, supply, etc. it would be very "Bell System" for there to be some sort of interplay between Teletype and UNIX.

Anyone got the scoop on whether Teletype hardware enjoyed a special place in UNIX tty-interfacing considerations or vice versa, or if they were just two relatively insular developments from one another in the same general field from the same big umbrella organization?

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Ronald Natalie]

The thing most people know in the (computer) world as a teletype is a 
model 33 which really UNIX was unaffected by (other than dealing with 
the limited character set) and UNIX didn’t influence.   For those with a 
model 37 (I had one in my house for a while picked up surplus from Rocky 
Flats), you knew of its influence on UNIX.   This was a unit that the 
line terminator was indeed NEWLINE (^J) rather than carriage return.  It 
dealt with all the ESC 8 and 9 and the like that nroff put out by 
default and th SI/SO to shift from the regular to the greek character 
box.

The mechanical teletypes largely predated UNIX having the ability to 
change anything.

That doesn’t mean that UNIX didn’t affect the TELETYPE brand.   The 5620 
DMD bore the Teletype brand but came straight from BellLabs Blit (aka 
Jerry) work.

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Paul Winalski]

On 9/18/23, Ronald Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> The thing most people know in the (computer) world as a teletype is a
> model 33 which really UNIX was unaffected by (other than dealing with
> the limited character set) and UNIX didn’t influence.   For those with a
> model 37 (I had one in my house for a while picked up surplus from Rocky
> Flats), you knew of its influence on UNIX.   This was a unit that the
> line terminator was indeed NEWLINE (^J) rather than carriage return.  It
> dealt with all the ESC 8 and 9 and the like that nroff put out by
> default and th SI/SO to shift from the regular to the greek character
> box.

Most importantly for Unix, I would think, the Teletype model 37 had
both uppercase and lowercase capability.  Essential for a
case-sensitive environment such as Unix.  The model 33 was
uppercase-only.

-Paul W.

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Dave Horsfall]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023, Larry McVoy wrote:

> This is perhaps silly, but I really wanted to meet Joe Ossanna because 
> of troff.  It was not meant to be.  My dad told me you aren't dead until 
> they stop talking about you.  Good to see that Joe is still with us.

I still remember being blown away when I encountered ROFF on Edition 5; 
like, I didn't know that you could use a computer for that sort of 
thing...

(Yeah, I quickly discovered that Unix was first and foremost a typesetting 
system after I read the Bell Labs paper.)

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Larry McVoy]

This is perhaps silly, but I really wanted to meet Joe Ossanna because
of troff.  It was not meant to be.  My dad told me you aren't dead until
they stop talking about you.  Good to see that Joe is still with us.

On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 09:08:13PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> I omitted one crucial fact from my post about Joe Ossanna's influence
> on the TTY 37. That happened not in  connection with Unix, but with
> Multics. When Unix came on the scene, model 37 was already in
> production.
> 
> Doug

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Douglas McIlroy]

I omitted one crucial fact from my post about Joe Ossanna's influence
on the TTY 37. That happened not in  connection with Unix, but with
Multics. When Unix came on the scene, model 37 was already in
production.

Doug

[TUHS] Re: UNIX Influence on Teletype and Vice Versa

[Douglas McIlroy]

Joe Ossanna worked diligently to see that WECo's ASCII teletype really
would come to market and would meet the needs of Unix. He famously
estimated that Bell Labs alone was a sizable market: 777 machines. He
also leaned on WECo to make the return key issue a single newline. And
he specified what non-ascii characters would fill out the 128
positions on the Bell Labs type boxes. This requires encoding 7-bit
ASCII in 8 bits. I don't know whether WECo had been planning to do so
anyway.

Doug