The Esdac Film (1951, 1976)
3 points by pushcx
3 points by pushcx
I was remarking that the I/O devices were repurposed telegraph equipment, and realized that the ASR-33s I used in high school in 1979 were still repurposed telegraph equipment. (Our computer setup at the time was an old DG Nova 2 donated by Southern Railways as a tax write-off.)
Via; I was indeed struck by the literalness of the library and queue, and that the operator observes the "[memory] store monitor" that is ancillary to the paper and printed tapes.
It’s curious that EDSAC’s “initial orders” bootloader actually builds the code from a rudimentary assembly language, rather than directly loading machine code. I don’t remember seeing such a clear description of how typical programmers used other contemporary machines, so I wonder if they loaded machine code or what.
I guess the cryptic subroutine letter+number identifiers are because they are more like library classmarks, where it’s more important to identify the location of the tape than its purpose. I expect the catalogue in the folder has a longer name and description.
Re literal metaphors, if they spliced tape instead of copying it, that would surely be a linker :-)
There’s a brief shot of the subroutine description page in the catalog at 5:21. (What we would call the doc comment today.)