[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Douglas McIlroy]

Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbató 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. (Corbató 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

[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[ron minnich]

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ah, the flexowriter, for those who never saw it, was literally a
typewriter with solenoids at the bottom. I owned one, it was a miracle to
behold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter#/media/File:Flexowriter_2201_Programatic.jpg

On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 7:19 AM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbató 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. (Corbató 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
>

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[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Clem Cole]

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Indeed -- and the sounds it made were distinct.   Different from ASRxx or
2741's

For the younger crew, this made the light and >>so much quieter<< TI Silent
700 of 10 years later such a marvel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700
ᐧ

On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 12:12 PM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> ah, the flexowriter, for those who never saw it, was literally a
> typewriter with solenoids at the bottom. I owned one, it was a miracle to
> behold.
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter#/media/File:Flexowriter_2201_Programatic.jpg
>
> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 7:19 AM Douglas McIlroy <
> douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
>> Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbató 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. (Corbató 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
>>
>

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[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Rich Salz]

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It was basically a selectric on top of a box with little hooks. It pulled
each key right?

On Mon, May 8, 2023, 2:47 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Indeed -- and the sounds it made were distinct.   Different from ASRxx or
> 2741's
>
> For the younger crew, this made the light and >>so much quieter<< TI
> Silent 700 of 10 years later such a marvel:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700
> ᐧ
>
> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 12:12 PM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ah, the flexowriter, for those who never saw it, was literally a
>> typewriter with solenoids at the bottom. I owned one, it was a miracle to
>> behold.
>>
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter#/media/File:Flexowriter_2201_Programatic.jpg
>>
>> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 7:19 AM Douglas McIlroy <
>> douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbató 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. (Corbató 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
>>>
>>

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[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Jon Steinhart]

On Mon, May 8, 2023, 2:47 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

    Indeed -- and the sounds it made were distinct.   Different from ASRxx or
    2741's

    For the younger crew, this made the light and >>so much quieter<< TI Silent
    700 of 10 years later such a marvel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
    Silent_700

And let's not forget the Execuport, a bit noisier than the Silent 700 but
better contrast and didn't turn into invisible ink if you left the paper
near the radiator.

[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[ron minnich]

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oh no, it was literally a typewriter, old school,  no selectric ball.
https://youtu.be/4HfaveA_NE0?t=365

On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 3:06 PM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> It was basically a selectric on top of a box with little hooks. It pulled
> each key right?
>
> On Mon, May 8, 2023, 2:47 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> Indeed -- and the sounds it made were distinct.   Different from ASRxx or
>> 2741's
>>
>> For the younger crew, this made the light and >>so much quieter<< TI
>> Silent 700 of 10 years later such a marvel:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700
>> ᐧ
>>
>> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 12:12 PM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ah, the flexowriter, for those who never saw it, was literally a
>>> typewriter with solenoids at the bottom. I owned one, it was a miracle to
>>> behold.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter#/media/File:Flexowriter_2201_Programatic.jpg
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 8, 2023 at 7:19 AM Douglas McIlroy <
>>> douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Although it dates from four years ago, MIT's obituary for Corbató 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. (Corbató 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
>>>>
>>>

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[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

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> On 9 May 2023, at 06:53, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> oh no, it was literally a typewriter, old school,  no selectric ball. https://youtu.be/4HfaveA_NE0?t=365


I have used a Friden Flexowriter to drive the algol-60 copiler for the electrologica X1. The model that is described here <https://ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum/flexowriter.html>. According to wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter> there have been different models.

	jaap


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[TUHS] Re: Corbato dead

[Rich Salz]

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Never mind.  Oops

On Thu, May 4, 2023, 5:59 PM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/fernando-corby-corbato-1926-2019.  He
> invented time-sharing, passwords, and ran Project MAC.
>

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