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From: hen@bu-cs.UUCP (Bill Henneman)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: origin of "personal computer"
Message-ID: <751@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 08:11:34 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.751
Posted: Thu Nov  7 08:11:34 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 21:26:18 EST
References: <8511052150.AA19797@ucb-vax.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 16

To the best of my recollection, DEC didn't use the word personal in
conjuction with computer until the late 70's: they certainly weren't
using it in the 60's.  I qoute from my 1963 edition of the DEC PDP1
handbook:

  PDP stands for *Programmed Data Processor* and is a trademark
  of Digital Equipment Corporation. 

The same quote appears in my July, 1969 edition of DEC's 
  Introduction to Programming
    PDP-8 Family Computers
and my 1970 edition of DEC's
  Small Computer Handbook

I can find no expansion of the PDP acronym in any DEC manual with
a publication data later than 1970.