

PLATO (computer system) - adam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_system

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brianstorms
If you're interested in PLATO, stay tuned. I have been working for many years
on a book that tells the story of the PLATO system. It's what I am working on
full-time at the moment, 7 days a week.

Three years ago I put on a 2-day conference at the Computer History Museum in
Mountain View, CA, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the
PLATO system. Videos of all the sessions are available on YouTube at
YouTube.com/platohistory.

If you want to know more about the book and what it covers, go to
[http://friendlyorangeglow.com](http://friendlyorangeglow.com)

~~~
AsymetricCom
Yes, I will buy your book. I hope it is a better replacement for actually
participating in PLATO or browsing the Cyber1 archive. Perhaps not the first,
but hindsight is sometimes better than being there.

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ja27
Georgia Tech had a lab of CDC 721 terminals and used PLATO for at least one
class. It always felt weirdly futuristic (or Hollywood fake) for a seemingly
"dumb" terminal to switch into a graphical touchscreen mode. I wish we'd had
some of the more fun stuff running on them, but they were already being
overtaken by X-Windows (Sun 3s and Macs with A/UX), Macs, and PCs with a mix
of DOS and early Windows.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I remember using PLATO at tech, but can't remember what class it was for.
Chemistry maybe? Or maybe, strangely, Intro To Psych. The terminals I remember
were in the Lyman Hall building, which was also the freshman chemistry
lecture/lab building at the time.

~~~
rietta
I never saw this before. I used to like walking past the old data center in
the Rich Building at Georgia Tech. It was hard to imagine what it was like in
its hay day with punch cards and all.

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bbulkow
I coded on Plato in the mid 80's ("Tudor" language). I was paid minimum wage
(about $3.25 per hour), and had various tasks maintaining courseware. I was
brianb@udel

What everyone says is true: with the forms of chat and email that were
prevalent, and things like the friday afternoon dogfights, the future of
massively connected computing became "obvious". Based on what I saw then, I
worked in computer networking after graduating from college, moved to silicon
valley, and recently founded my own company building high speed distributed
databases.

I bought my first computer over Plato: I found a guy in Illinois who had an
older Xerox CP/M machine, we agreed to the price over email, I sent him the
check and he sent me the machine. This would have been about '83.

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dalek_cannes
An aside on UI: am I the only one who still romanticizes about monochrome
yellow/orange/light-blue-green on black line-art interfaces? That second PLATO
terminal on the article reminded me of that (kind of like this LCARS screen:
[http://lcars.org.uk/lcars_files/LCARS%20MSD_Enterprise%20B.g...](http://lcars.org.uk/lcars_files/LCARS%20MSD_Enterprise%20B.gif)
edit: or this:
[http://www.lcarscom.net/all_mini_avis.gif](http://www.lcarscom.net/all_mini_avis.gif))

When I'm on Wikipedia or some tutorial site, I still sometimes imagine myself
looking at the same content in a futuristic monochrome view.

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davidf18
You can try out the PLATO system today by getting a signon on
[http://cyber1.org/](http://cyber1.org/)

Plasma display technology was invented there.

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marshray
I remember playing on the PLATO system a few times as a single-digit-year-old.
My parents were grad students at UIUC.

There was a game called ANTWAR. You would be shown an army of enemy ants in a
rectangle in a certain number of rows and columms. The trick was to multiply
the rows and columns and choose the size your army to be exactly one more ant
in number.

They don't let kids hang out in datacenters anymore. But kids have more
interesting games at home anyway.

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taliesinb
As a South African, I'm fascinated to learn that during the 1980s, PLATO was
deploying for tertiary-school education, even in discriminated-against (e.g.
black, 'coloured') colleges.

It's bizarre to think that in the dying days of apartheid there was already
some faction of the government seduced by the promise of third-world techno-
utopianism.

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dmourati
Freshman year at UofI I enrolled in a Philosophy course, 108 I think. Mostly
liberal arts majors, another engineer and I were in the same study session.
The philosophy graduate student TA gets us together for our first study
session of the year and walks us through the syllabus.

TA: This semester, we'll be talking about Aristotle, Descartes and Plato.
Engineer: We'll we be taking our tests on PLATO? TA: Yes, we will have two
midterms and a final and we will cover Plato. Engineer: No, I mean will we be
taking all our tests on the PLATO system. TA: I don't know what you mean, but
yes, you will be tested on Plato. Engineer: No, I mean. Me: The TA is talking
about the philosopher Plato while Mr. Engineer is talking about an online
testing computer called PLATO. Rest of class, befuddled, me rolling my eyes.

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IvyMike
> games such as Avatar and Empire (a star-trek like game), which had both
> accumulated more than 1.0 million contact hours on the original PLATO system
> at UIUC

I hated these dudes. Play on your own time, I gotta do another CircuitTutor
unit.

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andrewflnr

      CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the
      computer world, but found marketing the system was not as easy as
      hoped. PLATO nevertheless built a strong following in certain markets, and
      the last production PLATO system did not shut down until 2006,
      *coincidentally* just a month after Norris died.
    

Emphasis mine. Is that some bitterness I detect? I guess it's a mark in
Wikipedia's favor that things like that stand out, but still...

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tibbydude
In 1980 there was a PLATO installation at our local University (UWC) in South
Africa when I was in high school.

It was used by first year students for some tut work and by high school
students from the surrounding area for maths courseware.

It was an interesting experiment and novelty but I don't think it
fundamentally changed how the varsity did or approached it's teaching.

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AsymetricCom
Wouldn't this be the real precursor to the internet instead of the often-hyped
arpanet? Is TCP/IP really what makes the internet the internet, or sharing
ideas and collaborating with abstractions on an electronic network in general?

~~~
adam
This is actually why I posted this. It seems PLATO has never gotten its due
for the truly revolutionary concepts it introduced. I remember - in the early
eighties - playing networked games and participating in tournaments, sending
"personal notes" which were emails, participating in discussion forums with
people from universities all over the world, taking lessons to augment my
schoolwork...There was even instant messaging. All from a PLATO terminal which
was made out of wood and metal and connected to the university mainframes at
1200baud.

~~~
trentmb
I dunno about that. I walk by a nice little wall display about it whenever I'm
at Siebel.

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wikih8
posting wikipedia articles isn't news

~~~
derleth
Hacker News is only 'news' in the Usenet news sense of the term.

