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From: Nick Maclaren on 4 Aug 2010 05:00 In article <4c58c055$0$34573$c30e37c6(a)exi-reader.telstra.net>, robin <robin51(a)dodo.com.au> wrote: >| >| > >| >| >| >| TTYs came in in the mid-1960s >| > >| >TTYs were being used in 1960 and even earlier. >| >There were demonstrations used on remote installations >| >back in the 1950s. >| >| Sigh. Yes, of course I know that. It's not the point. They were >| specialist devices until the first time-sharing computers started >| to be used for real work, which was in the mid-1960s. > >Liverpool University was using TTYs for time sharing in or prior to 1962. Sometimes I wonder why I ever bother replying to you. Flat-screen displays existed for 20 years before they started to be used, and it is the latter stage (with regard to data entry) that this thread is about. Cambridge is one of the candidates for introducing that usage, and I suggest that you read up a bit more about the history of time sharing and, in particular, which universities are generally credited with introducing it. Oh, and look at my Email address, too. >| And, even then, they were too scarce to be used for data entry, > >In the 1950s, and 1960s they were never "too scarce". >They were manufactured by the thousands for telegraph work -- >if not tens of thousands --and could be purchased from such manufactures >as Creed, Siemens, and Teletype. Either you are playing political word games or are completely bone- headed. Yes, OF COURSE, the kit was widespread - the problem was simultaneous connexions to the (rare and limited) computers. There were some systems that claimed proudly that they could support up to four (4! Count them!) simultaneous connexions. >| which was done offline, and they were used for editing, debugging, >| etc. > >Sure, many of those in computer installations were used >off-line because the only computer input mode was paper tape I/O. >However, some systems had TTYs on line. Yes, I used them and visited sites with others. In the 1960s. I am speaking from both personal knowledge and information received directly from some of the originators of the usage. Enough is enough. Post whatever response you will. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: Clive Page on 4 Aug 2010 16:23 In message <1jmno09.1seld3fijkwcgN%nospam(a)see.signature>, Richard Maine <nospam(a)see.signature> writes >the web page itself. One (at least this one) more than half suspects >that Andy saw that the site template had a spot for screenshots, so he >put some it, fully knowing how silly it was. > Yes, I'm fairly sure he did. There is a place for screenshots, in my opinion, but documenting a command-line interface isn't one of them. -- Clive Page
From: mecej4 on 4 Aug 2010 18:53 Nick Maclaren wrote: > In article <i377mm$lh$1(a)speranza.aioe.org>, > glen herrmannsfeldt <gah(a)ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: >>Janus Weil <jaydub66(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >>In the IBM S/360 and S/370 Fortran manual the sample programs >>are printed as written on a "Fortran Coding Form." > TTYs came in in the mid-1960s but, as people have said, didn't take > off as entry devices for a long time, even in the most advanced > locations. We didn't use them for that at Cambridge until well > into the 1970s. > I used an Elliot 803 in 1967-68. It had only paper tape for input and a line printer for output. The OS, compiler, source code and data (if needed), were fed in one after the other from paper tape, with some console buttons pressed in between steps. -- mecej4
From: mecej4 on 4 Aug 2010 19:02 Richard Maine wrote: > dpb <none(a)non.net> wrote: > <--CUT--> > In my first few years, when I was still a co-op work-study peon, I'd > fairly often end up doing the keypunching for some of the senior > engineers in our office. I once got quite a lecture for "improving" the > computer code as I typed it. The lecture was indeed deserved. Besides > the basic issue of that being the wrong way to suggest improvements (I > just did it without mentioing that I had done anything other than play > keypuncher), in retrospect, some of the "improvements" I made probably > weren't good ideas anyway. For example, I would see things like > 2*some_other_literal, and do the multiplication myself instead of > leaving it that way. I probably had some notion that this would be more > efficient (which probably wasn't even so), and failed to recognize that > the original form was more clear to the reader in context. Hey, I was 18 > at the time. > You must have been a terror! Given for punching a long program to test whether the hypothesis F = m.a was correct, I can imagine you punching up PROGRAM FEQUALSMA WRITE(6,10) 10 FORMAT(5H TRUE) STOP END -- mecej4
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 4 Aug 2010 20:17
mecej4 <mecej4.nyetspam(a)opferamail.com> wrote: > Richard Maine wrote: >> fairly often end up doing the keypunching for some of the senior >> engineers in our office. I once got quite a lecture for "improving" the >> computer code as I typed it. (snip) > You must have been a terror! Given for punching a long program to test > whether the hypothesis F = m.a was correct, I can imagine you punching up > PROGRAM FEQUALSMA > WRITE(6,10) > 10 FORMAT(5H TRUE) > STOP > END There have been discussions on the future of optimizing compilers, including ones that do algorithm optimization. That is, substitute a faster algorithm for the one given. (Code bubblesort, compiler compiles quicksort, etc.) Otherwise, there have been plent of cases where an optimizing compiler compiled down to a constant. One that I might have mentioned before was a benchmark program written as a set of deeply nested statement functions to evaluate a very complicated mathematical result. The IBM Fortran H compiler, with optimization level 2, evaluated the whole thing at compile time, resulting in slow compilation and very fast execution. -- glen |