[Air-l] PDP decoded - unintentional humor

[Barry Wellman]

I'm doing the final proofing of "Sociologists Engaging with Computers"
which should appear this April in _Social Science Computing Review_. It's
an intro piece to the issue's focus on the history of our Communication &
Information Technology section of the American Sociological Association.
As such, it has a bit of computing history in it.

I was astonished that when the copyeditor read my reference to the DEC PDP
(hallowed be its name), she changed it to "Programmed Data Processors".
Ever since it arrived in William James Hall (Harvard) in the
mid-1960s,it's been the PDP. In fact, I had to Google now to see that yes,
this is the literal full name of the thing -- which nobody ever used.

Dealing with copyeditors is always a tug of war. I've left the expansion
of CPU and RAM go, but darn-it, a PDP is a PDP.

 Barry
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
	     To network is to live; to live is to network
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