[TUHS] early Unix terminals

[Ken Thompson via TUHS]

most of the unix people used an ibm
134.5 baud terminal. i think the designation
was 1050. it was a desk of electronics with
a selectric typewriter on top. it preceded
the tty 37.

On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 11:02 PM Lars Brinkhoff via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
wrote:

> Clem Cole wrote:
> > There is great story about this.  Control-T came from Tenex
>
> And Tenex got it from BBN LISP on the 940.
>
> > the first TOPS-20 folks customized (hacked) OS so that depending what
> > the load average, control-T returned different messages telling you a
> > bit more than “Running.”  So instead of saying “Running” it started
> > saying “Jogging”, “Walking” or “Crawling” but the administration got
> > upset when it was most often stating “Dying.”
>
> On ITS, the system monitor PEEK reports the speed of a running job
> with the fastest being WARP, then ZOOM, FLY, RUN, WALK, TENEX, and
> the slowest being MULTIX.  (The latter two used to be CRAWL and CREEP.)
>
> Follow-ups should go to COFF.
>