Expensive Typewriter
{{short description|Computer program}}
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File:Programs Punched paper tapes in Computer History Museum - California.jpg at the Computer History Museum holds a copy of the Expensive Typewriter program binaries, ready for loading]]
Expensive Typewriter was a pioneering text editor program that ran on the DEC PDP-1 computer,[http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/pdp-1/DEC.pdp_1.1972.102650079.pdf "Expensive Typewriter" (manual)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304120542/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/pdp-1/DEC.pdp_1.1972.102650079.pdf |date=2016-03-04 }}, August 1, 1972, MIT which had been delivered to MIT in the early 1960s.
Description
Since the program could drive an IBM Selectric typewriter (a letter-quality printer), it may be considered the first word processing software. It was written and improved between 1961 and 1962 by Steve Piner and L. Peter Deutsch. In the spirit of an earlier editor program, named "Colossal Typewriter", it was called "Expensive Typewriter" because at that time the PDP-1 cost a lot of money (approximately {{Currency|100000|USD}}) as compared to a conventional manual typewriter.{{Cite web|language=en|url=https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/ad6b7367b8cbd0133326c23c49a029d0/ |title=PDP-1 Price List|website=www.computerhistory.org|access-date=June 17, 2022}}
References
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See also
- PDP-1
- Expensive Desk Calculator
- Expensive Planetarium
- Expensive Tape Recorder
- Text Editor and Corrector
- RUNOFF
- TJ-2
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