How did Dennis Ritchie produce his PhD thesis? A typographical mystery (2022) [pdf]

Post by benj111 » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 10:13 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #66

userbinator wrote: post #14

We have no idea how it would even be possible to make these horizontal adjustments with the typing machines of the time. I agree with the other comment here that the authors haven't used a typewriter, or at least in enough detail to know that on many if not all of them, holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.)

> holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.) backspace did something similar, it was a common error correction to reposition the carriage halfway between two letters to sqeeze-in/add a letter that had been missed (once you get used to computers it's hard to remember that backspace didn't delete anything, it just moved you back)

Post by workmandan » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 10:25 AM UTC

jhncls wrote: post #43

mrweasel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing is probably done by hand and Ritchie just had excellent handwriting.

It would be hard to beat Edger Dijkstra's handwriting. See e.g. the one numbered 831, where he explains the naturalness of zero-indexing [0]. [0]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF

Post by leokennis » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 10:48 AM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #66

userbinator wrote: post #14

We have no idea how it would even be possible to make these horizontal adjustments with the typing machines of the time. I agree with the other comment here that the authors haven't used a typewriter, or at least in enough detail to know that on many if not all of them, holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.)

> holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.) backspace did something similar, it was a common error correction to reposition the carriage halfway between two letters to sqeeze-in/add a letter that had been missed (once you get used to computers it's hard to remember that backspace didn't delete anything, it just moved you back)

Post by jleyank » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 11:08 AM UTC

squokko wrote: post #47

DougMerritt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "tulip-wheel printer"? I get no search results. If you meant "daisy-wheel printer", wikipedia says that was 1970 and later. [1] Just as general interest, not because I have reason to think it was used for his thesis, the "Friden Flexowriter" was quite heavily used with computers back then, including at MIT (don't know about Harvard), and it had many models -- one of which, interestingly enough, supported ju…

"Tulip wheel" is hilarious because a print wheel looks a lot like a daisy and nothing like a tulip.

Post by sargstuff » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 11:25 AM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #27

userbinator wrote: post #14

We have no idea how it would even be possible to make these horizontal adjustments with the typing machines of the time. I agree with the other comment here that the authors haven't used a typewriter, or at least in enough detail to know that on many if not all of them, holding down the spacebar will advance the carriage by half a character (and releasing it, in normal use, advances the other half.)

The thesis has even finer horizontal spacing, creating a perfect centering effect of variable width line numbers, while the rest text on the same line is grid aligned. It's not something you do with a typewriter, unless you are a computer science PhD.