> On Jul 15, 2016, at 1:03 PM, Swift Griggs <swiftgri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...
> Cool things about PLATO:
> * It had graphics, but ran on terminals!
> * It could do animations in the content
> * It supported speech synthesis. Blind folks want to play too!
> * Cool people were involved (NSF, Navy, Air Force, many scientists &
> engineers, Control Data, etc..)
> * It had a flight simulator!
> * It punched above it's CPU power for a i8080
There's an 8080 in the programmable terminals (though the original "Magnvox"
terminal was just a pile of hardwired logic). But that didn't have to do much.
The real work was in a CDC 6000 series machine. Still, those performed
unusually well too; running 600 highly interactive concurrent users on a pair
of CDC 6500 machines is pretty impressive. (CPU power: about 2 MIPS per CPU on
a good day, two CPUs per 6500.)
> * It was said to be easy to code for (TUTOR was the lang, sayeth
> wikipedia)
> * They had MUDs and other cool multi-user games, as well as "social
> media" (ie.. chat and multi-user applications).
> * Even way back when, they had touch screens!
Not only that, but many of the things you mentioned were invented on PLATO:
plasma panel displays, multi user games, social media, chat, bulletin boards
("group notes"), etc.
paul
