Possible Origins
The phrase RTFM may have first appeared in print in 1979 on the Table of Contents page of the LINPACK Users' Guide in the form: "R.T.F.M." -- Anonymous. Apocryphally, some of the authors heard it from a Tektronix salesman.
The phrase RTFM was in common use in the early 1950s by radio and radar technicians in the US Air Force. Operators frequently did not check simple faults, for example checking whether a fuse had blown or a power plug had become disconnected.
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