From: dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith)
Subject: First word processor was Pete Samson's TJ-1, c 1964.
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 15:31:00 GMT

Well, actually I'm not too sure about any of this but I figure I'll
babble what I THINK I know and let the truth emerge in flaming follow-ups.

The TX-0 at MIT used a Friden Flexowriter as console terminal, tape reader,
and punch.  The PDP-1 used modified IBM electric typewriters, and Friden
Flexowriters were used as offline tape preparation devices.  This meant
that the overall computing environment included letter-quality devices with
upper and lower case.  It also meant that the medium (paper tape) encouraged
software designs that thought of I/O in terms of byte streams rather than
fixed-length records.

The Flexowriter, in itself, was an electric typewriter that could read and
punch tape.  The "stop code" provided for primitive personalization.
Dear stopcode.  Your account is now in arrears by stopcode.  etc.  In a
very primitive sense the Flexowriter itself was a word processor.  I believe
the Justowriter was also a Friden product.  The IBM Executive Typewriter
provided limited proportional spacing.  

The TERM "word processing" was invented by IBM, circa 1975 I think, as a
marketing thing, and originally included just plain typewriters.

Well, I digress. Anyway, a piece of software called TJ-2 (TJ for Type 
Justifier) was in declining use (i.e. its peak was EARLIER) circa 1964 or
so at MIT.  I believe it was used to print the Tech Model Railroader's
newsletter.  It was a primitive, but recognizable RUNOFF-like system
(no attempt at WYSIWYG editing; separate editor/formatter).  It didn't use
dot commands; I believe the nonspacing overbar was used to mark commands,
a common convention for PDP-1 software.  I believe there were about
ten commands.  You definitely could center lines, justify them, word wrap
them, and there was definitely two-column capability.  You could leave
space to insert pictures.  There was also an incredibly impressive (to me)
hyphenation feature.  Whenever it needed to hyphenate a word it would
display it on a CRT and you'd point the light pen at the hyphenation points.

This was the first thing _I_ saw that resembled a word processor, and
it surely antedated the UNIX tools.  Whether _it_ was influenced by
typesetting stuff I wouldn't know.  

I'm PRETTY sure that Digital got into typesetting and had a package
called TYPSET/RUNOFF or something of the sort, TYPSET being the "real"
typesetter and RUNOFF intended to be the rough-proof-on-fixed-pitch-printer
tool.  I think these antedated and influenced the UNIX tools, i.e. I
think the name TROFF is derived from the then-popular RUNOFF.

While I'm babbling.  Contrary to a recent item in ComputerWorld, "Expensive
Typewriter" did NOT just make the PDP-1 into a typewriter.  It was
a text editor vaguely similar in capabilities to EDLIN.  The name was
just because of general horror at the whole idea of using expensive
processor cycles, even PDP-1 processor cycles, for something as mundane
as text editing.  The original (highly flawed!) idea behind TECO, which
stands for Tape Editor and Corrector, was to replace (yuck) on-line
interactive editing with efficient offline editing.  You'd prepare a
"correction tape" offline and feed it in along with the original, and
punch a corrected copy.  In other words, the idea behind TECO was to
replace interactive editing with BATCH PROCESSING!

The fancy features in TECO were intended to provide a rich enough
feature set to make this possible.

I personally never met any human being skilled enough with TECO to use
it that way.  It was always used on-line.  (I DID, occasionally, see
people making corrections by SPLICING PAPER TAPE.  But I never saw anyone
making a TECO correction tape).

Another cultural issue was that text editors were slow to arise in the
IBM world because you could insert and delete physical cards from card decks.

I can't prove it, but I believe these historical features (paper tape,
letter-quality upper/lowercase typewriters) influenced the way Digital
designed products, which in turn influenced some of the thinking of the
designers of UNIX.  

Anyway, the first word processor _I_ ever used was Expensive Typewriter
or TECO as the editor, followed by TJ-2 as the formatter.  I still have
a writeup on TJ-2 somewhere and when I find it I'll post more.


-- 
Daniel P. B. Smith
dpbsmith@world.std.com