[TUHS] Boston Children's Museum (was: PWB 1.0 Distro and Licensing Timeframe)

[Jonathan Gray]

On Sun, Mar 12, 2023 at 12:44:14PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> 
> A $20k price for commercial use is mentioned by Bill Mayhew then of
> the Boston Children's Museum in
> https://archive.org/details/1975-03-peoples-computer-company/page/10/mode/2up

Distributions/Research/Dennis_v6/v6doc.gz has material from
the museum.

The article mentions "Federal Screw Works VOTRAX voice synthesizer"
And v6doc.gz is what speak was partly reconstructed from.

article mentions:
"UGUESS (1 to 100 number-guessing), 10GUESS (1 to 10 number-guessing),
a modified WUMPUS, HANGMAN, TICTACTOE, MATHDICE (an adding game for
itty-bittys), and 31 (the game of thirty-one)."

v6doc.gz includes:

char *descrp[]{
        "a game of tic-tac-toe",
        "an adding game for younger children",
        "a number guessing game",
        "an easier number guessing game",
        "the game of hangman",
        "find the wumpus hiding in a series of caves",
        "try to make a pile of 31 objects before the computer does",
        0
};
char *games[]{
        "tictactoe",
        "mathdice",
        "uguess",
        "10guess",
        "hangman",
        "wumpus",
        "31",
        0
};

 *      SHELL
 *      Copyright 1975, The Children's Museum, Boston
 *      Author: Bill Mayhew

https://archive.org/details/1974-09-peoples-computer-company/page/22/mode/2up

"UNIX has a version of your Wumpus game, written in C, that has become
a big hit at Harvard on their system and has been rewritten in other
languages there, too.
...
Can you send us ASAP hardcopy listings of your games so that we can
translate them to C"

https://archive.org/details/digital_edu_number_10/page/24/mode/2up
from 1973, mentions a pdp-8 with logo and raising funds for a pdp-11

> 
> "There are now more than 70 UNIX installations within and outside the
> Bell System. Some representative non-Bell users include Columbia
> University; the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry; Harvard
> University; and the Boston Children’s Museum, the first licensed
> non-Bell users."
> 
> https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/login_apr15_16_unix_news.pdf
> "UNIX at the Children’s Museum has been fully operational since
> August, 1974. Development work jointly with Harvard University began the
> previous winter, making us one of the first non-Bell users"
> 
> Bill Mayhew recounted this in
> https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2002-November/002217.html