Origin of 'Straight 8' name

[Bill Degnan]

>
>
>
>     > From: Bill Degnan
>
>     > The original PDP 11 was sold in two model options, although the
> numbers
>     > did not appear on the faceplace, very clearly the model options were
>     > called PDP 11/10 and PDP 11/20. ...  The fact that the name does not
>     > appear on the front panel has caused every DEC historian to miss this
>     > factoid.
>
> Yeah, it tripped me to. Although after I sent that email, I went back and
> looked, and it's called '-11/20' on all the documents I can find, including
> the prints.
>
> I'll check in the DEC archives (available on BitSavers), but I suspect the
> "PDP-11" on the front panel was the result of something getting dropped in
> the
> process of doing the panel, not the reasult of a name change by DEC.
>
>
>
Sorry to hijack the thread.

The URL I provided has links to documentation with a few early references
to the PDP 11 being 11/10 and 11/20 models that I could find.  A few
magazine articles, etc.  It's pretty well researched at this point to be
true to state that the first two PDP 11 models were the 11/10 and 11/20.
It just takes a while for this to work its way through academia.
Bill