From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 15251 invoked from network); 8 May 2023 14:19:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (2600:3c01:e000:146::1) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 8 May 2023 14:19:28 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4BF4A411EC; Tue, 9 May 2023 00:19:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-vk1-xa30.google.com (mail-vk1-xa30.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4864:20::a30]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0A89840D02 for ; Tue, 9 May 2023 00:19:05 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-vk1-xa30.google.com with SMTP id 71dfb90a1353d-452f92680ecso228919e0c.1 for ; Mon, 08 May 2023 07:19:04 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=dartmouth.edu; s=google1; t=1683555543; x=1686147543; h=content-transfer-encoding:to:subject:message-id:date:from :mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=mu5DvQ9imH2o9yKJpZcghOgMlepGDzMa98RT6eJRGK8=; b=a+iwaJC+QTmhL8aAQPoQxIQ0jVmGPCuxKBKfi3MXnZbWljbuHerriQmYfm5rAJQHqn KNKiqlzEz9Wk2SxlXeoyEcULZobOkwatx71NrzO5Wxk91sDo5yuMGvylu4Pqsnh1aFPL WngHLWRsK3zg9rLATcbQuvG2JxQiOM1AtoCFgPd/gBOXNhb8BTJN8A+0pYRWLDG6NH3f BE/0l62c/B0MLVmU0BOw+B+4il0rg5kATqse6gQUPYY1xYjkenWY9+ntaXwYe6AnhCeT 9FU0s1MAvnntZK5d9C9e1z/g1llXRZcjLWLYUWD194sYgcelYhJdQJ1x9AicRd/jNWTf hhPg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20221208; t=1683555543; x=1686147543; h=content-transfer-encoding:to:subject:message-id:date:from :mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id :reply-to; bh=mu5DvQ9imH2o9yKJpZcghOgMlepGDzMa98RT6eJRGK8=; b=YFwObWtaLt6WVM+jeM7bKh+grAhChJUFQB7gQn4E83esTbpfG53b4ndbr77IdS+Ryh NPYiFScuPOc1nu5rciu6XzvBr9PcVUc/S1hNfh2IA1zIVEd6nxUCKskQv/pG3KPrLzsg myYpvuZXnkdxEY5j+h8JTJH8EdNp65McF1+KvSbuQgs/QFbvdfG0vtpbNfG4l8l4sqQN HDBRvO8K6oMO0BbgCk32Yep89swP40up7vRRxUtCz1AVf6RqMCAVj3NPc3EuEg1avyf8 UKHB5fxxKdFgpzYvZVraJAuKPprRXrCl8hpJ5G+pFmcyS5si2ynpZ1ISYYsrLfOYkwKt 64bw== X-Gm-Message-State: AC+VfDydrSzNmANwD9dBaaaO6M4J6XWcm/1ceMrq7WQHHvRfYibI8QQF h98HO9dE3cwaBMn8Zm0ymElNT24K7FVKC7oZvc9xuzBevmO78pLAaI8= X-Google-Smtp-Source: ACHHUZ7TpxjB9D/duAIewdMk7/SV/f07V+vZUVdzeq9ripVYXR9DMXEklkfHTuhnlk2Etkd14/RMACqCyehpsLQGCVA= X-Received: by 2002:a1f:430c:0:b0:44f:e6ff:f316 with SMTP id q12-20020a1f430c000000b0044fe6fff316mr1660941vka.12.1683555543470; Mon, 08 May 2023 07:19:03 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Douglas McIlroy Date: Mon, 8 May 2023 10:18:47 -0400 Message-ID: To: TUHS main list Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID-Hash: KUPPZUHQKWNUKOZYLQV5XAUHINWTZPM7 X-Message-ID-Hash: KUPPZUHQKWNUKOZYLQV5XAUHINWTZPM7 X-MailFrom: douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Corbato dead List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbat=C3=B3 was still interesting to reread. It couldn't bring itself to mention Unix--only the latecomer Linux. It also peddled some mythology about Whirlwind from the decade before timesharing. "Whirlwind was ... a rather clunky machine. Researchers often had trouble getting much work done on it, since they had to take turns using it for half-hour chunks of time. (Corbat=C3=B3 said that it had a habit of crashing every 20 minutes or so.)" "Clunky" perhaps refers to Whirlwind's physical size. It occupied two stories of the Barta Building, not counting the rotating AC/DC motor-generators in the basement. But it was not ponderous; its clean architecture prefigured "RISC" by two decades. Only a few favored people got "chunks" of (night) time on Whirlwind for interactive use. In normal business hours it was run by dedicated operators, who fed it user-submitted code on punched paper tape. Turnaround time was often as short as an hour--including the development of microfilm, the main output medium. Hardware crashes were rare--much rarer than experience with vacuum-tube radios would lead one to expect--thanks to "marginal testing", in which voltages were ramped up and down once a day to smoke out failing tubes before they could affect real computing. My recollection is that crashes happened on a time scale of days, not minutes. "Clunky" would better describe the interface of the IBM 704, which displaced Whirlwind in about 1956. How backward the 60-year-old uppercase-only Hollerith card technology seemed, after the humane full Flexowriter font we had enjoyed on Whirlwind. But the 704 had the enormous advantages of native floating-point (almost all computing was floating-point in those days) and FORTRAN. (Damn those capital letters!) Doug