Lincoln had ETAOIN on his personalized MN license plate (on the very well worn Ford full size van he drove) and another guy had SHRDLU on his plates.
I was told that the name came from this string which could be found in printed works and that people had always seen it but just read past it because it didn't fit or make sense. I believe it was Neil's youngest son Brian who offered up this name but I'm not remembering why anymore. There was also a Lincoln story that ETA was like The Eta, a Spanish terrorist group and all of us at ETA were going to terrorize the supercomputer industry. Chris On September 10, 2017 9:55:02 PM CDT, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: >On 09/10/2017 06:25 PM, Tapley, Mark via cctalk wrote: > >> There was one of those machines in my Junior High School shop >> classroom. I saw it run once (not well enough to successfully set a >> line of type, but nearly). >> >> I endorse Mark’s assessment of its safety characteristics... > >I knew a fellow who had one of them in his barn--and he set the local >freebie weekly newspaper with it. Open gas flame, hot type metal >that's mostly lead, lots of open whirling parts--what's not to like? > >Running one is definitely a real skill. ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP... > >Neil Lincoln once told me that the name of ETA Systems back in the 80s >was suggested by his son. Neil knew about the Linotype order, but it >was unclear to me if his son got it from a literary work (there were >several) or from the actual machine. Chris Elmquist might know. > >FWIW, the "assembler" in a Linotype machine is where the type matrices >drop down in a row, ready for "kerning". Another non-computer use of >the word. > >--Chuck -- Chris Elmquist
