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From: jsloan@wright.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: UNIX NAME ABBREVIATIONS
Message-ID: <195@wright.EDU>
Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 08:55:11 EST
Article-I.D.: wright.195
Posted: Wed Nov 25 08:55:11 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 03:19:06 EST
References: <1051@swlabs.UUCP>
Organization: Wright State University, Dayton OH, 45435
Lines: 27

in article <1051@swlabs.UUCP>, jack@swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) says:
> In article <6706@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) writes:
>>In article <388@cogen.UUCP> alen@cogen.UUCP (Alen Shapiro) writes:
>>>		  "spool" (Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off Line)
>>I suspect this is revisionist acronym retrofitting.
> I agree.  I thought spool referred to the spool of magtape that you hung 
> to collect the line printer data for later.  Remember magtapes?

SPOOL cannot be that revisionist, because I remember it from an IBM
manual from my previous reincarnation as a systems programmers on
mainframes (360/65 with MFT is my earliest memory, although I have some
regressed racial memories of an 1130). I seem to recall reading about
the SPOOL acronym in a HASP manual (Houston Automatic Spooling Program,
or Houston Automatic Spooling Priority system, depending on what manual
you read, although my "official" SHARE IBM acronym manual from 1977
lists the latter definition).

How many other acronyms have come into such common use that we take
them for words rather than acronyms? How many acronyms that originated
in the IBM mainframe environment has the UNIX community (perhaps
unwittingly) adopted?

-- 
John Sloan                     Wright State University Research Center
jsloan@SPOTS.Wright.Edu       3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420
...!cbosgd!wright!jsloan               (513) 259-1384   (513) 873-2491
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