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∂AIL Dr. Jack Blackburn
↓Computer Science and Technology Board
↓National Academy of Science
↓National Research Council
↓2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
↓Washington, D.C.  20418∞

Dear Jack:

	I found the minutes of the last meeting very interesting and
plan to come to the next meeting.

	The documents from me should not have been called a history
of time-sharing.  While I consider them relevant to the history
of time-sharing, they are much too concerned with my personal role
and point of view to be a candidate for a history.  Let me remind
you that I told Jack Schwartz about the memo to Morse, and he asked
for a copy which I eventually sent.  While I think I instigated the
work on time-sharing at M.I.T., BBN and Stanford, others at M.I.T.
may have different opinions, and I don't know whether our ideas or
work influenced Dartmouth.  Someone with historical inclinations
would have to ask many questions about who and what influenced
what work.  Incidentally, I recall that Edmund C. Berkeley did
a small study for Information International on early work on
text processing, and I'll send a copy when I get it.

	It seems to me that crediting word processing to industry
is an oversimplification.  Much of it is descended from editing
systems on time-sharing computers, and these were first done at
universities.  The first display systems used for time-sharing
systems were at Stanford on the PDP-1 and were built to our
specifications by Philco.  Previous work considered the display
a one-to-a-computer device.
IBM Research was designing a $100,000 display (the 2050 model 4)
at the same time we installed a system of 60 $600 displays in 1971.

.sgn