[net.games.rogue] Brief History of Plato

wsg (11/19/82)

	I was at U. of Illinois about 5 years ago, when PLATO was
taking off.  While I am not familiar with many of the details,
CDC did provide much of the hardware and some of the
initial development effort for PLATO, though it was really a joint
effort with the university, with students providing much free labor.
As time went by, the university became a software factory providing
almost all of the software, and doing research on the newer terminals.
(You see, PLATO didn't have general terminal interfaces, but had its
own special terminal with a plasma panel... I don't know if it supports
other terminals now or not... ).  Anyhow, CDC wanted to keep the
development effort secret, as is typical in the business environment,
and sell PLATO systems, while the University wanted to publish papers
and give away much more information.

CDC and the University finally signed a contract (in about 1976) which
gave CDC the rights to market PLATO, including all the software developed
at the University.  In exchange, the University was to receive a royalty
of 1 or 2 percent of whatever CDC made selling the machines.

About this time I left the University and lost touch with its history
since then.

				-Bill Goldberg

vasse (11/29/82)

I used PLATO for almost a year out here in the San Francisco Bay area before
coming to San Diego.  The games are much more interesting for two
reasons.
1) the graphics
2) All files are shared and games can easily be written as multi user.
One game that I thought was the best was called empire.  No, not the empire
by Peter Langston.  This game was a real time space game.  A friend of mine
was so intriqued with the game he wrote it for a VAX/VMS system.  He has
made many improvements on it.  Anyway,  I have noticed in some ads, tat
micro's are trying to implement many of te educational things from PLATO
on their micros.  The terminals that I used where from a grant so they were
free.  I have eard that they charge something like 10,000 dollars a year
to rent.  I don't think that it is worth that much.

					Rich
					ucbvax!sdcsvax!vasse