🚀 go-pugleaf

S/360 announce 4/7/1964, 54yrs
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PR360.html

... and from 34yrs ago

we had regular Friday's after work and one of the discussions was that
most of middle management and executives were computer illiterate
... and could we create something that would attract them to using
computers. We came up with the idea of doing online telephone books. Jim
Gray would write the lookup application and I would create the
collection and formating process ... but neither of us would use more
than 2weeks of our time (note this was later picked up by and shipped by
PROFs). One of the hardest problems were site security that believed
computer/soft copies of paper phone books violated security.  From long
ago and far away:

Date: 04/07/80 09:33:19
From: wheeler
To: gray
 
TELE EXEC starts out with

*  DIRECTRY

but I would like to be able to specify as parm on TELE a name
specification like

TELE wheeler ( s*

which would then search s* directry files. Default would start out being
all files and then somebody could override with just subset. People
could have thier own execs to invoke TELE, i.e. MYFONE

EXEC TELE &1 &2 &3 ( myfone
EXEC ELE &1 &2 &3 ( sanjose

--
'bout as easy to customize it this way as any.

... snip ...

.... a few minutes earlier

Date 04/07/80 09:19:05
To: wheeler
From: gray

Lynn: the VMCF stuff sounds good.

I will combine the TELEX and PROBE (probably tonight). Another approach
would be to have a list of files to be searched called the TELE SEARCH
file. This could specify the order of the search and also which files
are to be searched. If this were done then TELE would have to change
also. Any thoughts?

... snip ...

.... the day before, 

Date: 04/06/80 13:02:12
From: wheeler
To: distribution

re: directries; following has gone out on stl's VMTOOLs disk. Gray is
working on PROB routine for use by TELE exec. If request is simple case
of last name then the PROB routine will be invoked to search the
files. Currently SCANFILE is taking almost .8 168 seconds to search all
directries we have so far. Hopefully the PROB code will cut that be
nearly an order of magniture.

DIRECTRY QMARK:

This file describes the NEWS files which have a CMS filetype of DIRECTRY
containing online telephone directory information. There may be many
files, usually representing different physical locations or entites.

The use of these files is intended to be location specific. At Santa
Teresa they are maintained on a "best effort" basis. Users are
encouraged to make use of the information contained within these files
but are also warned that they are convenience items only, THE ACCURRACY
OR CURRENCY OF THE DATA IS NOT GUARANTEED! The system of interchange and
use is still in development. The TELE EXEC searches these files (as of
the DIRECTRY scheme cutover date on TELE INDEX within NEWS contains
entries pertaining to the TELE/DIRECTRY files and access.

This file will be updated as changes warrant. 80 March 31.

... snip ... 

trivia: there had been application that did SCANFILE which was
sequential search of files (sort of like unix grep). PROBE was radix
partition search. Binary Search starts in middle of sorted file, 16k
entry file takes avg. 14 tries (i.e. 2**14). Radix partition used the
letter frequency distribution of sorted phone data, using first two
letters of last name, 16k file, calculated partition avgs 24 records,
first try is middle of that partition ... 2nd try includes correction
for "error" of 1st try. Typical logical record was 80bytes, typical
physical record was 4096bytes ... high probabilty 1st try will
at least be within the correct physical recrd.

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970