Origin of The Term
According to Tanenbaum, "Spool" is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line. For printers: simultaneous peripheral output on line. Early mainframe computers had no disk drives and slightly more recent ones had, by current standards, small and expensive hard disks.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, computers used SPOOL software to copy files from one medium to another: punch card to tape, tape to punch card and tape to printer, with occasional use for card-to-card copying. The introduction of the relatively inexpensive IBM 1401 led to a temporary reduction in the use of SPOOL software.
Read more about this topic: Spooling
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)