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It's interesting that the 1964 CTSS manual† linked from the article (OCR'ed by Google††) uses "login", one word, no blank. See page 6 (page 14 of the PDF).

I knew about ships' logs, but I didn't know that the word "log" originated from the use of a wooden log tossed overboard attached to a knotted rope, so that the observed speed could be entered into a book that eventually came to be known as a ship's log.

Also interesting in that manual is that each "segment" of a command (what we now call a token) was six characters, blank-padded. The 7094 had 36-bit words and 6-bit bytes.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/ctss/CTSS_Program...

††http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SapGOxk...



Isn't that in reference to a command literally named "login", presumably due to the lack of a good convention for separating words without the space character?

Like "useradd" on contemporary Linux.


That's very likely.


"the use of a wooden log tossed overboard attached to a knotted rope"

Now you know why speed is measured in knots

(Nowadays, it's a useful measure for great circle routes, that's why it's kept)




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