[TUHS] God vs god (was Upper/Lower at DEC)

[Toby Thain]

On 2019-10-13 11:17 p.m., Steve Johnson wrote:
> There is a story (or perhaps an urban legend) that mainframe computers
> used all upper case, in spite of research showing lower case was easier
> to read, because some executive said "But with all lower case, we can't
> spell God's name right".  Anybody able to put some reality behind that?
> 


Did nobody explain to the executive that, like printed typography for
FIVE HUNDRED years prior, that a character set with lower case would
include BOTH CASES? (Typographic research doesn't claim that lower case
_only_ is easier to read, and there are reasons to believe it is not.)



> Steve
> 
> 
> 
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     From:
>     "Lars Brinkhoff" <lars at nocrew.org>
> 
>     To:
>     "Arthur Krewat" <krewat at kilonet.net>
>     Cc:
>     <tuhs at tuhs.org>
>     Sent:
>     Sat, 12 Oct 2019 04:24:01 +0000
>     Subject:
>     Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Curious Question from the Ether about use of Upper
>     and Lower case at DEC
> 
> 
>     Arthur Krewat wrote:
>     > While BAH was more involved in PDP-10 stuff, I wonder what her take is
>     > on this.
> 
>     I don't think there ever was a lower case "pdp10" on the machines.
>     From what I see, it was "PDP-10", "decsystem10", "DECSYSTEM 20",
>     or "DECSYSTEM 2020".
>