1960s Multics man pages, when manpages were still on a shelf of notebooks as god intended
Posted via email to ☛ HoloChromaCinePhotoRamaScope‽: cdevers.posterous.com/1960s-multics-man-pages-when-manpag....
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UPDATE: 21 June 2011: Much to my surprise, the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris used this photo in a bibliographic footnote / aside part three of his New York Times piece, Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?. The footnote follows, but the whole series is fascinating and well worth reading:
[18] Van Vleck wrote to me, “We wrote a lot of memos during CTSS and Multics development. The general approach was to write in longhand and ask a secretary to type it up on a mimeograph stencil. The mimeo documents would be circulated for comments. When a document was approved, the secretaries would retype it and send it out for (2 sided) offset printing at the MIT printing plant (2 week turnaround). MSPM sections were typed on special typewriters called Flexowriters that also recorded their output on paper tape.”
Project MAC had an early Xerox machine but it was not for use by random programmers. It was kept in the room where the Felowriter operators worked, and professors could ask for things to be Xeroxed. It was not used casually because (1) it was prone to jam and eat input documents. (2) only a trained “key operator” could fix jams without breaking it. (3) sometimes these jams led to fires (4) it was expensive. When Xerox technology and prices improved, it was approved for memos if they were one side of one page and could be done in a day. Shorter memos ensued.”
Some of the early manuals have now actually become museum exhibits.
1960s Multics man pages, when manpages were still on a shelf of notebooks as god intended
Posted via email to ☛ HoloChromaCinePhotoRamaScope‽: cdevers.posterous.com/1960s-multics-man-pages-when-manpag....
• • • • •
UPDATE: 21 June 2011: Much to my surprise, the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris used this photo in a bibliographic footnote / aside part three of his New York Times piece, Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?. The footnote follows, but the whole series is fascinating and well worth reading:
[18] Van Vleck wrote to me, “We wrote a lot of memos during CTSS and Multics development. The general approach was to write in longhand and ask a secretary to type it up on a mimeograph stencil. The mimeo documents would be circulated for comments. When a document was approved, the secretaries would retype it and send it out for (2 sided) offset printing at the MIT printing plant (2 week turnaround). MSPM sections were typed on special typewriters called Flexowriters that also recorded their output on paper tape.”
Project MAC had an early Xerox machine but it was not for use by random programmers. It was kept in the room where the Felowriter operators worked, and professors could ask for things to be Xeroxed. It was not used casually because (1) it was prone to jam and eat input documents. (2) only a trained “key operator” could fix jams without breaking it. (3) sometimes these jams led to fires (4) it was expensive. When Xerox technology and prices improved, it was approved for memos if they were one side of one page and could be done in a day. Shorter memos ensued.”
Some of the early manuals have now actually become museum exhibits.