[TUHS] primary sources for the 1966 Multics ASCII cutover as the first "Flag Day"?

Royce Williams royce at techsolvency.com
Sat Jul 19 05:42:48 AEST 2025


I see the Wikipedia "Flag day (computing)" [1] article references two
semi-different ESR sources [2,3] to support the claim:

> This systems terminology originates from a major change in the Multics
operating system's definition of ASCII, which was scheduled for the United
States holiday, Flag Day, on June 14, 1966.

I don't doubt the validity, but I'm looking for other "citation worthy"
sources that supplement this claim --- ideally that predate the ESR ones,
so that they are unambiguously independent.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_day_(computing)
2. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/flag-day.html
3. *The New Hacker's Dictionary*
<https://books.google.com/books?id=g80P_4v4QbIC&pg=PA192>pp. 192–

-- 
Royce Williams
Tech Solvency
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