[TUHS] E-mail address for Dick Haight?

Norman Wilson norman at oclsc.org
Mon Dec 12 04:52:20 AEST 2011


Arnold Skeeve:

  Have you asked Doug McIlroy?

=======

Actually I did, last night, on Warren's behalf.
I had meant to drop Doug a note anyway to apologize
for not letting him know I was in his general neighborhood
last week.

Here's Doug's reply:

  Pipes were first documented
  in v3, Feb 1973.  At that time my original clumsy shell
  syntax, cmd>cmd>[file] was still in use.  Within a few
  months, Ken invented today's pipe symbol as something
  more presentable at a talk he'd been invited to give
  in England--an Infosys "State of the Art" conference
  if I remember correctly (not the same Infosys as the
  current Indian giant). 

  I also remember the very blackboard in the garret
  lab where I sketched my syntax and Ken exclaimed,
  "I'll do it".  That was late in the day and I'm
  quite sure it was dark outside.  Unlike Ken, I
  was not in the habit of staying in the lab into
  the evening.  That makes me think that pipe day
  was not too far off the solstice.

  It would be nice to believe that pipes preciptated
  the third edition, but in fact the first four editions
  came out almost like clockwork at 8-month intervals,
  so any correlation with pipes is highly speculative.

======

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(actually Ramsey NJ at the moment, a good bit north of Murray Hill)



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