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From: Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Names of ancient computing devices [was:  Re: The joy of FORTRAN]
Date: 08 Mar 2025 17:44:24 -0500
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ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) writes:

> In article <mddv7skl9hy.fsf_-_@panix5.panix.com>,
> Rich Alderson  <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
>> c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> writes:

>>> It was vac-tube tech then ... and 'digital' was kinda
>>> limited to Turing's stuff and the incipent UniVac.

>> Quibble (reading this in a.f.c, naturally), If you're going to CamelCase the
>> name of that device, you should write UnivAC, as it's name was

>> 	Universal Automatic Computer

>> (understanding "computer" as the name of a human occupation which had been
>>  electronically automated).

> Asimov took "AC" and ran with it:

> 	https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

In one of his essays, Asimov explained that he made the same error to which I
was responding above, that UniVac was a device with *one* *vacuum* *tube*, so
that he called the computer in his story "MultiVac".

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen