bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) (10/10/90)
On iuvax here, Steve Kinzler finds: | | From /usr/local/calendar.history: | | Aug 14 First Unix-based mallet created (1954) | | Anyone got a clue what this is about? Arguably, this is the first instance of a "computer game". The mallet was created in celebration of the just-announced invention of the transistor, and wild-eyed Bell Labs employees ran around gleefully smashing electronic tubes ("valves", for you younger types :) with the mallet. At least, they tried to. They were quickly brought up short by the realization that their new mallet would not have any OS support for another decade and a half. Not only that, but they had no way to score their new game as the Nixie-tube readouts had been among the first to be smashed. Meanwhile, a large paper-chaff maker was positioning itself to dominate the emergent computer industry with a siren song called "OS\360". And to support this monster of obscure opcodes, IBM applied the in-house masterstroke that they used successfully against UNIX for years, until it was finally written. IBM's hardware answer to the UNIX mallet, the premature predecessor of all other UNIX tools: They Used a Bigger Hammer.