I don't know if this was just me, but the inner geek in me first thought was "How did the pictures turn out"? :-) (the second thought was "Joe is now a hero to me" even thought I didn't meet him... and this sounds sooo much like what I've done with other geeky friends in college, etc... ). An example today, I got a Bluetooth water bottle (as part of a reward for something at work) and when I set it up it needed a firmware update, which I thought was cool (and my wife just rolled her eyes...). :-) Earl On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:50 PM Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: > another joe: > > echo 1 was a 100 foot balloon that was > launched into space in the early 60s. this > was the first satellite that was easily visible > to the naked eye. > > joe wrote a set of fortran programs that > tracked the orbit of echo and calculated > the direction to look from a point on earth. > to do this, he had to learn fortran and > orbital dynamics. > > the programs were used to point antennas > to send emf from california. bouncing off > echo and received at bell labs in > new jersey. thus, thanks to joe, echo was > the first communications satellite. > > by the time i came to bell labs (1966) the > program, azel, for azimuth/elevation, was > expanded to track planets, moons, satellites, > etc. moreover, it tracked the shadow of the > earth cast by the sun (night). it could predict > within a few seconds when echo would wink > on or off as it passed through the shadow. > > a version of azel was maintained all the time > i was at bell labs. we used it to predict > eclipses, transits, occultations etc. when > we first got a voice synthesizer, the day's > predictions were spoken at 5pm in case > there was anything interesting. > > anyway, at 5pm on june 8, 1983 the voice > announced an "occultation of mercury" > for early the next morning. > > no one had heard of such a thing. it was > extremely rare. mercury had to be at > about its max elongation; the moon had > to be only a few hours old (or young); > it had to be dark; the moon and mercury > had to be above the horizon; and lastly, > the moon had to occult mercury. > > we all (me, lee mcmahon, dennis ritchie, > rob pike, and bob morris) frantically tried > to verify that it was real. it was, but it > would only be about 5 degrees above > the horizon facing right into new york city. > not a chance. we all went home. > > later that night we were writing to each > other and calculating that in an airplane > at 10,000 feet, the event moved up to 10 > or 15 degrees above the horizon. also, > in an airplane, we could avoid nyc. > > so at 3am, we (me, rob pike, rae mclellan) > went to the airport equipped with cameras > and binoculars. we flew north as high as the > plane would go. we might be the only > people in the world who have seen an > occultation of mercury. thank you joe. > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 6:57 PM, Larry McVoy wrote: > > As a long time roff fan (I still use it, yes, I've learned LaTex, I much > > prefer roff), I'm hugely bummed that Joe left us so early. I feel like > > there would be more fun stories, like Ken's story. > > > > If I remember correctly, he wrote the first (Unix *) version of roff in > > PDP-11 assembly, right? Granted, PDP-11 assembly is perhaps the most > > pleasant assembly ever, but it is still assembly. Roff is a non-trivial > > program, I can't say that I've every written anything remotely that big > > in assembly (the only thing I'm proud of is writing swtch() in VAX, 68K, > > and some other CPU that I can't remember, but that was tiny, hard to get > > right, but tiny). I've got mad respect for what he did, I feel like the > > whole roff thing doesn't get enough respect. It wasn't just roff, though > > that started it, it was pic (I *love* pic), eqn, all the other filters > > that go down to roff. For lmbench I wrote my own grap like tools > > because grap wasn't open source. > > > > I was talking to Marc Donner, a Morgan Stanley techy (since moved on > > to google and who knows where) about why I liked roff. At the time > > I had built webroff which took roff -ms input and made websites. > > Marc pointed out that the reason I liked roff was, for the most part, > > it didn't say how to do something (that was buried in the macros), > > it said what you wanted to do. > > > > Ken, if you have more Joe stories I'd love to hear them, I feel like > > I missed out on a cool person. > > > > (*) I know that nroff was "new run off" and it came from somewhere, > > MIT? Some old system, but it wasn't invented in Unix. That said, > > I've never seen docs for the previous system and I kinda think Joe > > took it to the next level. If you haven't studied the docs and > > written macros, you should. It's a pretty neat system. > > > > On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote: > >> joe was much more than that. he knew how > >> to play the system. example: > >> out of whole cloth, he invented a form to > >> order a teletype and opx (bell labs extension) > >> installed in the home. he then filled out the > >> form for each of the unix-room dennisons. > >> there was a phone call from a confused > >> clerk, and then we all got teletypes and > >> data sets at home. as an aside, the opx > >> came with free watts (long distance which > >> was very expensive in those days.) > >> > >> > >> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Dave Horsfall > wrote: > >> > We lost J.F. Ossanna on this day in 1977; he had a hand in developing > Unix, > >> > and was responsible for "roff" and its descendants. Remember him, > the next > >> > time you see "jfo" in Unix documentation. > >> > > >> > -- Dave > > > > -- > > --- > > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm >