[ih] DNS origins?

[John Day]

That is correct.  As an undergrad, I had second semester (~67-8) Circuit Theory from Slottow. ;-) 

In 1975, after putting the first Unix on the ’Net, we stripped down Unix to put it on an LSI-11 in a pedestal with floppy drive, a Plato Plasma screen sitting on top to which we added ’touch’ to create an ‘intelligent terminal’ for a land-use management database system for the 6 counties around Chicago. It had a keyboard but it was seldom needed. The terminal was all menu driven, could plot different forms of graphs (bar, line, circle, etc.) and draw maps down to the section* (square mile) with different patterns, but of course monochrome. (I wrote the mapping software.)

So this was undoubtedly the first plasma screen “personal computer” ;-)  There were several done for the land-use system and several deployed with in the DoD in at least DC and Hawaii and perhaps elsewhere, that I don’t remember.

* The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required the then Northwest Territories (Ohio to Illinois and north) to be surveyed into 1 mile squares called Sections, 6 x 6 sections is a township. Which is why you see a grid when flying over it. The country roads tend to run on the section lines.

Take care,
John

> On Jun 10, 2021, at 01:56, Timothy J. Salo via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> On 6/9/2021 9:14 PM, Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
>> https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=900 makes interesting reading. It answers my first question: "...one of the first graphic amber plasma flat screen."
> 
> I thought that the Plato terminal, circa 1964, was the first practical
> plasma display.
> 
>  The first practical plasma video display was co-invented in 1964 at
>  the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign by Donald Bitzer, H.
>  Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO
>  computer system.
> 
>  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display>
> 
> Also,
> 
>  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)>
> 
>    And, even more off-topic:
> 
>      In August 2004, a version of PLATO corresponding to the final
>      release from CDC was resurrected online. This version of PLATO
>      runs on a free and open-source software emulation of the original
>      CDC hardware called Desktop Cyber. ... Desktop Cyber accurately
>      emulates in software a range of CDC Cyber mainframe models and
>      many peripherals.
> 
>    o Now, I just need a nine-track tape drive to read my old tapes.
> 
>    o How much faster is my Raspberry Pi 4 (1.5 GHz clock, 8 GB memory)
>      emulating a CDC 6600 (10 MHz clock, 982 KB memory)?
> 
> -tjs
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