Richard Merrill (computer Scientist)
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Richard Merrill (computer Scientist)
Richard Merrill was a Digital Equipment Corporation employee who invented the FOCAL programming language and programmed the first two interpreters for the language in 1968 and 1969, for the PDP-8. He also developed later versions of the interpreter for the PDP-7 and PDP-9 The PDP-9, the fourth of the five 18-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, was introduced in 1966. A total of 445 PDP-9 systems were produced, of which 40 were the compact, low-cost PDP-9/L units.. History The 18-bit PDP ..., later ported it to the PDP-11. Merrill also designed and programmed the EDIT-8 text editor (using paper-tape).Who's Who
Rick Merrill is an alumnus of Episcopal High School, a preparatory school in Alexandria, VA ...
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Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until forced to resign in 1992, after the company had gone into precipitous decline. The company produced many different product lines over its history. It is best known for the work in the minicomputer market starting in the mid-1960s. The company produced a series of machines known as the PDP line, with the PDP-8 and PDP-11 being among the most successful minis in history. Their success was only surpassed by another DEC product, the late-1970s VAX "supermini" systems that were designed to replace the PDP-11. Although a number of competitors had successfully competed with Digital through the 1970s, the VAX cemented the company's place as a leading vendor in the computer space. As microcomputers improved in the late 1980s, especially wit ...
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FOCAL (programming Language)
FOCAL (acronym for Formulating On-line Calculations in Algebraic Language, or FOrmula CALculator) is an interactive interpreted programming language based on ''JOHNNIAC Open Shop System'' (JOSS) and mostly used on Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series machines. FOCAL is very similar to JOSS in the commands it supports and the general syntax of the language. It differs in that many of JOSS' advanced features like ranges and user-defined functions were removed to simplify the parser. Some of the reserved words (keywords) were renamed so that they all start with a unique first letter. This allows users to type in programs using one-character statements, further reducing memory needs. This was an important consideration on the PDP-8, which was often limited to a few kilobytes (KB). Like JOSS, and later BASICs, FOCAL on the PDP-8 was a complete environment that included a line editor, an interpreter, and input/output routines. The package as a wh ...
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PDP-8
The PDP-8 is a 12-bit computing, 12-bit minicomputer that was produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was the first commercially successful minicomputer, with over 50,000 units being sold over the model's lifetime. Its basic design follows the pioneering LINC but has a smaller instruction set, which is an expanded version of the PDP-5 instruction set. Similar machines from DEC are the PDP-12 which is a modernized version of the PDP-8 and LINC concepts, and the PDP-14 industrial controller system. Overview The earliest PDP-8 model, informally known as a "Straight-8", was introduced on 22 March 1965 priced at $18,500 (). It used diode–transistor logic packaged on Flip Chip (trademark), flip chip cards in a machine about the size of a small household refrigerator. It was the first computer to be sold for under $20,000, making it the best-selling computer in history at that time. The Straight-8 was supplanted in 1966 by the PDP-8/S, which ...
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PDP-7
The PDP-7 was a minicomputer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation as part of the PDP series. Introduced in 1964, shipped since 1965, it was the first to use their Flip-Chip technology. With a cost of , it was cheap but powerful by the standards of the time. The PDP-7 is the third of Digital's 18-bit machines, with essentially the same instruction set architecture as the PDP-4 and the PDP-9. Hardware The PDP-7 was the first wire-wrapped PDP computer. The computer had a memory cycle time of and an add time of . Input/output (I/O) included a keyboard, printer, punched tape and dual transport DECtape drives (type 555). The standard core memory capacity was but expandable up to The PDP-7 weighed about . Software DECsys, the first operating system for DEC's 18-bit computer family (and DEC's first operating system for a computer smaller than its 36-bit timesharing systems), was introduced in 1965. It provided an interactive, single user, program development environment ...
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PDP-9
The PDP-9, the fourth of the five 18-bit minicomputers produced by Digital Equipment Corporation, was introduced in 1966. A total of 445 PDP-9 systems were produced, of which 40 were the compact, low-cost PDP-9/L units.. History The 18-bit PDP systems preceding the PDP-9 were the PDP-1, PDP-4 and PDP-7. Its successor was the PDP-15. Hardware The PDP-9, which was "two metres wide and about 75cm deep," was approximately twice the speed of the PDP-7. It was built using discrete transistors, and had an optional integrated vector graphics terminal. The PDP-9 weighed about and the PDP-9/L weighed about . It was DEC's first microprogrammed machine. A typical configuration included: * 300 cps Paper Tape Reader * 50 cps Paper Tape Punch * 10 cps Console Teleprinter, Model 33 KSR Among the improvements of the PDP-9 over its PDP-7 predecessor were: * the addition of Status flags for reader and punch errors, thus providing added flexibility and for error detection * an entirely new ...
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PDP-11
The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, making it one of DEC's most successful product lines. The PDP-11 is considered by some experts to be the most popular minicomputer. The PDP-11 included a number of innovative features in its instruction set and additional general-purpose registers that made it much easier to program than earlier models in the PDP series. Further, the innovative Unibus system allowed external devices to be easily interfaced to the system using direct memory access, opening the system to a wide variety of peripherals. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time computing applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years. The ease of programming of the PDP-11 made it very popular for general-purpose computing uses also. ...
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Year Of Birth Missing (living People)
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the planet, four seasons are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In tropical and subtropical regions, several geographical sectors do not present defined seasons; but in the seasonal tropics, the annual wet and dry seasons are recognized and tracked. A calendar year is an approximation of the number of days of the Earth's orbital period, as counted in a given calendar. The Gregorian calendar, or modern calendar, presents its calendar year to be either a common year of 365 days or a leap year of 366 days, as do the Julian calendars. For the Gregorian calendar, the average length of the calendar year (the ...
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American Computer Scientists
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ...
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Digital Equipment Corporation People
Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital images ***Digital versus film photography **Digital computer, a computer that handles information represented by discrete values **Digital recording, information recorded using a digital signal Socioeconomic phenomena *Digital culture, the anthropological dimension of the digital social changes * Digital divide, a form of economic and social inequality in access to or use of information and communication technologies * Digital economy, an economy based on computing and telecommunications resources Other uses in technology and computing * Digital data, discrete data, usually represented using binary numbers *Digital marketing, search engine & social media presence booster, usually represented using online visibility. * Digital media, media ...
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Programming Language Designers
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Programming (music), generating music electronically * Radio programming, act of scheduling content for radio * Synthesizer programmer, a person who develops the instrumentation for a piece of music Video or television * Broadcast programming, scheduling content for television * Program music, a type of art music that attempts to render musically an extra-musical narrative * Synthesizer patch or program, a synthesizer setting stored in memory * "Program", an instrumental song by Linkin Park from '' LP Underground Eleven'' * Programmer, a film on the lower half of a double feature bill; see B-movie Science and technology * Computer program, a set of instructions that describes how to perform a specific task to a computer. * Computer programming, ...
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