mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay (12/25/82)
From: Mark Weiser <mark.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay> Date: 21 Dec 82 13:31:09 EST (Tue) I am the acronym offender with ECU's. An ECU is an Error Correcting Unit manufactured by ACC (don't know what that stands for) which is used when connecting to the arpanet so both the IMP (box that connects you to the net) and your machine think they are right next to each other, when in fact they can be arbitrarily far away (like across the country).
hampton@ACC (12/25/82)
Date: 23 Dec 1982 at 2151-PST "ACC" stands for Associated Computer Consultants 720 Santa Barbara Street Santa Barbara, CA 93101 (805) 963-9431 We make the ECUs and other ARPAnet gear. Hampton G. Miller "Member of the Technical Staff" ----
solomon (12/26/82)
It seems to me that I heard somewhere (don't remember where) that ACC originally stood for "A Consulting Company", but that when the company got big and serious, someone felt that the name was too flippant. A similar story applies to NBI, a manufacturer of word processors, which simply uses its initials in advertisements, omitting mention of the fact that NBI originally stood for "Nothing But Initials". I can think of many other cases, but this discussion should probably be moved to net.nlang. Please don't reply to this article on net.unix-wizards. Marvin Solomon Computer Sciences Department University of Wisconsin, Madison WI solomon@uwisc ...!seismo!uwvax!solomon
mike@lbl-unix (12/30/82)
From: Mike.Caplinger <rice!mike@lbl-unix> Date: Mon, 27 Dec 82 23:41:54 CST I'd like to thank everybody who responded to my plea for acronym explanation, especially Chris Torek. I wonder if all Unix-Wizards submissions could be in poem form? Keep up the good work!