RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) (10/21/88)
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 06:55:50 EDT
From: Mark W. Eichin <eichin@athena.mit.edu>
The way I heard the story was that the Athena needed something to get
rid of the screensaver, when we had VS100's running X10 that were used
by students registering for accounts -- otherwise non-technical
students would assume they were broken. So, Tony DellaFera (DEC
employee @Athena) wrote an early version of xclock.
My recollection is that some of the early programs used at Athena
(including account registration) were built on top of a BLOX(sp?)
interface that didn't know how to refresh after an exposure event.
Screen-saver on a VS100 caused exposures, and it was the non-refresh
that caused the brokenness assumption (fact, actually). Yes, xclock was
originally created to defeat screen-saver.