Wanted stuff (Was: Pretty good week)

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Mar 2 15:40:35 1998

At 08:51 PM 2/28/98 -0800, you wrote:
>On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
>
>> > > > What does PDP mean, exactly? Is it something like the PC standard?
>> > >
>> > > PDP = Programmed Data Processor. It was the name that DEC used
instead of
>> > > the word 'Computer' for various reasons, most of them lost in the
folklore.
>> >
>> > According to _Computer: A History of the Information Machine_ by Martin
>> > Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray (BasicBooks, ISBN: 0-465-02989-2 [hard]
>> > 0-465-02990-6 [paper]), Len Olsen is quoted as choosing the name
>> ^^^
>> I don't know if that's an error in the original, or a typo, but I'm
>> pretty sure it should be 'Ken'.
>
>Sorry. Blatant typo. It is in fact "Ken" ('k' is right next to 'l').
>
>> > Programmed Data Processor because nobody would believe that "in 1960
>> > computers that could do the job could be built for less than $1 million."
>>
>> That's certainly one of the reasons that I've heard. Another is that
>> there was either a tax on 'computers' or that if you were a
>> government-funded place (state funded?) you could only buy 'computers'
>> from a very few approved companies. So Digital/DEC didn't make
>> 'computers' - they made Programmed Data Processors. Whether either of
>> those reasons is true I don't know.
>
>I've heard this reason for other "computers" not being called that as
>well...things like computers being called calculators because one couldn't
>get a computer in the budget.

   It's a known fact that HP called many of their machine calculators
instead of computers in order to get around the export restrictions on
computers.
     
   Joe
Received on Mon Mar 02 1998 - 15:40:35 GMT