Tiny TIM - History

History

TinyTIM's exact date of creation is unknown, but is observed by the staff and official history as March 18, 1990 (it is unlikely to be more than a week away from this date).

Based on the TinyMUD program, TinyTIM was created as a parody of other MUDs that were currently running, including TinyHELL and Islandia. While the original intent of the name was simply to parody the "Tiny-" prefix of the currently running TinyMUD games, it was later declared that this was both a combination of the singer "Tiny Tim" and "Tim the Enchanter" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The TinyMUD software required that object #1 be a "God" character, and this character was fashioned into a form of Tim the Enchanter, sealing the association.

It was installed on a machine owned by the GNU foundation (gnu.ai.mit.edu), using an account owned by Richard Stallman. At the time, Stallman's account had the same password as its username: "rms". TinyTIM's initial period of existence was one of constant deletions, as other users on the gnu.ai.mit.edu system would kill the process and remove the database of the MUD.

In July, 1990, TinyTIM was moved from the gnu.ai.mit.edu machine to a system hosted at the Supercollider in Texas.

In August, TinyTIM switched to the TinyMUSH 1.0 codebase, and was one of the first MUSHes. TinyTIM has diverged from nearly every other MUSH due to heavy modifications made around that time. As of 2012, TinyTIM is still in operation.