1 Mar
1998
1 Mar
'98
8:47 a.m.
On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
^^^
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').
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.
True! The DOD had such a policy in the '70s. A lot of 'programmable
calculators were bought in that era.
- don
> 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
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.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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