Apparently, though unproven, at 17:18 on Friday 26 November 2010, Peter Humphrey did opine thusly:
> On Friday 26 November 2010 14:32:58 Alan McKinnon wrote: > > One could ask the question "where did the first assembler come from?" > > > > Just as the first OSes and compilers were written in assembler to > > bootstrap C, so the first assemblers were written in hex codes to > > bootstrap the assembler. But hex code editors ran software, so where > > did the first hex code input gadget come from? > > > > And the answer to that is that it was written in binary. Yes that's > > right - a panel with 16 toggle switches and a few pushbuttons. Those > > didn't require software as everything was implemented in hardware. > > Except that in my case it was 24 switches, not 16 (this was a dedicated > process-control computer for nuclear-powered ships and power stations, > 35 years ago). And I sometimes had to make individual holes in the paper > tape to "write" or change the code. Ah, you were fortunate to work on the big boys. I only had the little ones around. My first job as an adult was ancient Burroughs banking terminals that loaded software with the same paper tape, I remember those days well. I never want to go back to those days either :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
