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:
“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)
“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)