[ih] astonishing patron saint of the Internet

[John Levine]

It appears that Dave Crocker via Internet-history <dcrocker at bbiw.net> said:
>On 4/14/2021 8:05 AM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>> Or, we could go ALL the way back:  "In the beginning, there was the 
>> word." :-)
>
>to capture a salient aspect of that time in history, perhaps:
>
>"In the beginning, there was the variable-length word."

Hrm, that was more like the second day.

The IAS machine, Manchester Mark I, Whirlwind, UNIVAC, and IBM 650 and
701 were fixed word length.  I think the first variable word length
machine was the IBM 702.

There must be a Williams Tube or delay line joke lurking in here somewhere.

R's,
John