Expensive Typewriter was a text editing program that ran on the DEC PDP-1 computer that had been recently delivered at MIT. Since it could drive an IBM Selectric typewriter (a letter-quality printer), it may be considered the first word processing program, although it was not WYSIWYG, having no CRT display. It was written and improved between 1961 and 1962 by Steve Piner and L. Peter Deutsch.
In the spirit of an earlier editor, named "Colossal Typewriter", it was called "Expensive Typewriter" because at the time the PDP-1 cost a lot of money (approximately 100,000 USD).
Famous quotes containing the words expensive and/or typewriter:
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed
but this is the typewriter that sits before me
and love is where yesterday is at.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)