[ih] cut and paste

[Michael Thomas]

On 8/7/23 4:43 PM, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> Jack et al.,
>   This thread is extremely interesting.
>   I was a 1970s era CS grad student at CMU.
>   A number of my cohort (not me) were both (a) from the Boston area 
> and (b) headed to Palo Alto.
>   On our TOPS-10 system, we had a choice of text editors: either TECO 
> or a Stanford editor called SOS.  I quickly decided that TECO was too 
> complicated for a text editor and didn't take its "programming 
> language and runtime environment" as a (positive) feature.  And SOS 
> was fine.

I'm trying to remember if I ever used SOS. I always heard that SOS stood 
for Son of Stopgap. It's never been clear to me who pappy was there.

>
>   But, stepping back, I was amused that an early comment in this 
> thread assumed that cut/paste originated with the Alto.  I didn't have 
> to wait too long for folks to point to EMACS and TECO.
>   Given the historical shift in the 'center of gravity' of the 
> computer industry from the northeast to Silicon Valley, and given the 
> many good reasons to admire the innovations from Si Valley, we 
> sometimes forget the richness of the DEC / EMACS / ARPAnet / etc. 
> world that predates the equally wonderful Xerox PARC etc. world.
>   Being neither 'from New England' nor ever having headed 'to Si 
> Valley', I don't have a dog in this hunt.

I never really though of it as competition. Boston, the bay area, Texas 
with TI and let's not forget UCLA which played a huge role with ARPAnet. 
Silly Valley and SoCal were deeply intertwined with DoD stuff, along 
with TI. The remarkable thing from my standpoint was how cooperative it 
seemed (ARPAnet being before my time). And of course the interaction of 
Bell Labs and ucbvax :) Great stuff.

Mike