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From: info-mac@uw-beaver.UUCP
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: 
Message-ID: <1903@uw-beaver>
Date: Sat, 13-Oct-84 14:08:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1903
Posted: Sat Oct 13 14:08:25 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 05:28:54 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From: Dave Fuchs 
Let's be historically accurate: The original meaning of "spool" was
"simultaneous peripheral operation >> OFF << line."  Files destined for a
printer or card punch were written on magnetic tape.  An operator would
periodically dismount the spool tape from the CPU's tape drive and mount
it on another drive that was connected directly to a printer or punch, and
the spooled jobs would be run off.  (That's what made the name "spool" so
cute; you ended up with a spool of tape instead of your printout.)  This
great advance meant that CPU's >> that couldn't handle multi-tasking <<
were no longer mostly idle when printing.  Only later, when mass disk
storage became cheaper and such things as interrupts and context-switching
were invented did "spool" take on the newer meaning.  It's interesting to
note that the Macintosh does seem to fulfill the requirements of the
earlier definition but not the later.
	-david