Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2007

One of the problems is the claim that IBM invented and/or was
first to do <something>...

One of the precursors to the whole Usenet kind of thing was CDC's
PLATO system which interlinked a number of universities, research
organizations as well as Control Data itself.

Originaly devised as an instructional delivery system that would
support 1000's of students with interactive learning facilities,
it pioneered some very innovative ideas. These included both
hardware (such as plasma display terminals with touch-sentitive
screens, program-controlled rear projection of 35mm slide rolls
onto the interactive screen (so the program could synchronize
what was displayed and paint graphics or text "over" the image)
and a bunch of other very clever stuff (e.g. the "gooch box"
which was a sort of music synthesizer attached as a peripheral
to the terminal.

Besides thousands of "courses" in all kinds of subjects (e.g. I used
it to dissect a virtual frog, also to pretended I was a trauma
physician looking after a  patient at death's door - I never managed
to save him) there were also equivalents to instant messaging,
email, bulletin-board discussions and so forth. You can read more
about it at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO

Specifically it had a facility called PNOTES (Private Notes) which
was logically equivalent to today's email - sending a store-and-
forward message to a designated recipient(s).

And another facility was GNOTES (General Notes) where one
posted (or followed up) a note on a named bulletin board which
any participant could see who "subscribed" to that board. Thus
it also included the concept of "threads" as we know them today.

(Remember when we still argued about the merits of "pull" and "push"
modes of communication? Who would have thunk that eventually they'd
be manifested in email and usenet as we have them today )

And one of these boards was called SOTS (Save Our Tongue
Society) where the subject(s) under discussion closely paralleled
today's AUE - even unto flame wars, bogus etymologies, grocer's
apostrophes, words ending in "gry", food, sheep and what have you.

I know of at least two other quondam AUE regulars who participated
in SOTS. We're talking here about the early to mid 1970's (1972 for
PLATO IV) and going on into the 1980's. This was long before stuff
like TCP/IP, PC's, etc, and while the word "terminal" still meant
teletype. This was when IBM was claiming to have just invented virtual
memory (pace the  British ATLAS machine as well as various Burroughs
machines) and long before HP came out with its alleged discovery of
touch-screens. And this is also where Xerox PARC got some of its
ideas from...

I think its time to nap again

Jitze

} Sara Lorimer wrote:
}> Are there any people still posting regularly who were on the IBM list
}> AUE evolved from? (I may be mistaken about my AUE history -- truly, I
}> should re-read the FAQ one of these days.)
}
} That Truly sounds like revisionist history to me, but I've largely
} avoided reading the FAQ myself (apart from the entry on falling off the
} turnip truck).  Erk?

I think Ron and Sparky were on something that AUE evolved from, but Ron
may be past caring.

That's it -- I have the impression that AUE grew out of the Nitpick
Forum. I wouldn't put any money on it, though.

I think you mean 1985, unless they had some other home before IBMTEXT
and some other medium before TOOLSRUN.  Also, I'm sure you mean WORDS,
not ENGLISH, which didn't come along until after the phrase "a kindler,
gentler nation."

¬R     The anti-suffragists will continue to be eligible, won't they?
http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/engel.html         --Ida Husted Harper