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PLATO: An educational computer system from the 60s shaped the future
- ddgflorida 4y agoI recall Plato being installed at Florida State University (FSU) in the early 1980s. Never was given the opportunity to use it though.
- dang 4y agoRelated. Not much really. Others? Irata.online: A PLATO service for retro computing enthusiasts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32600338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32600338 - Aug 2022 (26 comments) The PLATO Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782661 - Jan 2022 (1 comment) Irata.online a modern implementation of the PLATO computing system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24207044 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) John Hunter’s World Peace Game, Roger Ebert, and the PLATO System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460259 - June 2020 (9 comments) PLATO, Graphics, Time-sharing in 1960s - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21830810 - Dec 2019 (1 comment) PLATO Notes released 40 years ago today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21186845 - Oct 2019 (1 comment) A Look Back at the 1960s PLATO Computing System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 - March 2018 (45 comments) When Star Trek’s Spock Met PLATO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019201 - Dec 2017 (1 comment) The Internet That Wasn’t: Review of “The Friendly Orange Glow” by Brian Dear - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 - Nov 2017 (24 comments) The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747924 - Nov 2017 (1 comment) The Greatest Computer Network You’ve Never Heard of (PLATO) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15703024 - Nov 2017 (3 comments) Performing History on PLATO: A Response to a Recent SIGCIS Presentation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15542999 - Oct 2017 (1 comment) Want to see gaming’s past and future? Dive into the “educational” world of PLATO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957552 - Nov 2016 (7 comments) Ars Technica on the history of PLATO games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12827672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12827672 - Oct 2016 (1 comment) PLATO (computer system) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6666430 - Nov 2013 (23 comments)
- ryukafalz 4y agoThe Friendly Orange Glow (which a few of these reference) has easily the most information I've ever seen about PLATO in one place. (Perhaps more than you'd like, if you don't care for the university politics surrounding it - but hey, it's comprehensive.) For anyone who's at all interested in PLATO, I'd recommend giving it a read.
- californiadreem 4y agoSecond the recommendation. Great book.
- theodpHN 4y agoIf you're looking for a longer PLATO read, check out Brian Dear's definitive book: The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System https://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Orange-Glow-Untold-Cyberculture/dp/1101871555 https://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Orange-Glow-Untold-Cybercult...
- labrador 4y agoI stumbled on this book in the Menlo Park public library and really enjoyed it. I also wondered why I had never heard of PLATO. Very good read.
- williamDafoe 4y agoIn the seventies "Computer lib / dream machines" by Ted Nelson covered all the hottest computer systems in North America and included among them small talk and Plato and the logo Lab at MIT and graphics at Utah and a few others. Xerox PARC researchers visited PLATO in 1972 and when they got back to Palo Alto they implemented just about everything they saw! App generator for pictures (SD Mode), paint (charset editor), bitmap /memory graphics display (plasma panel), multiple fonts and character sets, etc!
- rbanffy 4y agoI felt it a bit confusing, going back and forth through time more than it'd be needed.
- felixgallo 4y agoFriendly Orange Glow is unfortunately kind of overstuffed, meandering and political and focused excessively on bitzer, and misses so much of what PLATO/NovaNET were to so many people. Empire, avatar, oubliette, dnd, even moonwar, typomatic, Room B/C, night ops, pso, AIDS, TERM-test, cherry keyboard hoarding, stig bjorklund, the chem lab, the trs-80 running the satellite, lippold haken and the music room, bigfoot. I don't know if it's possible to write the PLATO story but FOG only skips across the surface.
- 4y ago
- theodpHN 4y agoWhile U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan marveled in 2014 that his kids could learn to code online using Khan Academy, a 1975 paper on Interactive Systems for Education notes that 650 students were learning programming online using PLATO during the Spring '75 semester http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED102940.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED102940.pdf Khan Academy (2013) v. PLATO (1973) https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7307/11141723746_d2b239bd18_o.jpg https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7307/11141723746_d2b239bd18_o...
- pklausler 4y agoI still remember the awesome multiplayer fighter jet combat game!
- williamDafoe 4y agoBrand Fortner's Airfight - it inspired Sublogic Inc. who wrote Microsoft flight simulator 2023.
- brandfortner 4y agoThe first version of airtight was developed by myself and Kevin Gorey. I was the sole author of later versions.
- brianstorms 4y agoyo, Brand! nice to see you here!!!
- NelsonMinar 4y agoOne of my earliest memories of a computer was around 1979, when a kind teacher took me to see a PLATO terminal at my elementary school. I remember being shown I could play the game Concentration with another person somewhere else in the world, the magic of networking. It made a huge impression on me.
- californiadreem 4y agoIf you've ever enjoyed the game Rogue or roguelikes, Macromedia Flash, or the famous Mahjong Solitaire (among countless other influences), PLATO's influences are at hand. You can also experience the wonders of PLATO through emulation: https://www.cyber1.org/ https://www.cyber1.org/
- ohjeez 4y agoPlato Homelink was my first online community, circa 1984 (?), after a positive writeup in PC Magazine. It had a lot of positive tech features (graphics!). But mainly it was a warm and welcoming place, with friendly people who were really interested in learning from each other.
- brianstorms 4y agobrian dear / orange07 / pea.... homelink customer too... it was crazy expensive. But then I wound up with two physical PLATO terminals at home, and I was dialing in to CERL for all the fun and games, and to umbc for work
- AlbertCory 4y agoThis again. Ted Gioia also mentioned it this week. They did have some nice technology. I was there then. My total interaction with PLATO was once, as an experimental subject for a Psych class. A friend of mine had one class that used it. The consensus of the internet-history mailing list is that they were not very influential. They didn't "shape the future" because they kept to themselves, in their own building. We never saw them in the Digital Computer Lab. CDC completely missed the distributed computing revolution.
- vipvipv 4y agoI think there is SOME truth to this. I remember being there and thinking if this could go beyond their confines but it never tookoff!:)
- convolvatron 4y agoI used plato and found it pretty meh. MECC on the other hand
- AlbertCory 4y agowhat was MECC?
- convolvatron 4y agoMinnesota Educational Computing Consortium. They put ttys and later silent 700s in elementary schools and libraries connected by dialup to a CDC. they had a early mud called Milieu that I spent a lot of time on...and I wrote some basic and pascal programs. in fact I think I took a programming class at some kind of summer school at the community college that was hosted there too.
- joezydeco 4y agoMECC also published software for the Apple ][, including the first version of Oregon Trail that kids played in schools.
- 4y ago
- atleastoptimal 4y agoLooking at the general mood people had towards computers in the 60s, it's clear computers and any computer technology seem to follow a three decade trend of speculation, readjustment and push back, then full adoption. First decade: philosophical fervor, extreme optimism and speculative wonder into how the future will change Second decade: Post-bust adjustment, pessimism, bias towards return to normalcy Third decade: Full integration, time before feels alien 1960s: computers are a world changing, mind opening key to an unimaginably bright future 1970s: computers are just another tool and overhyped, not a change to the status quo 1980s: computers are inseparable from almost every part of our day to day lives 1990s: The internet is a world changing, mind opening key to a unimaginably bright future 2000s: the internet is just another tool and overhyped, not a change to the status quo 2010s: the internet is inseparable from almost every part of our day to day lives 2000s: AI is a world changing, mind opening key to an unimaginably bright future 2010s: AI is just another tool and overhyped, not a change to the status quo 2020s: AI is inseparable from almost every part of our day to day lives
- edizms 4y agoInteresting since cryptocurrencies are in their 2nd decade now.
- userbinator 4y ago1980s: computers are inseparable from almost every part of our day to day lives As someone who lived through that period, I don't think so. That description would be more applicable to ~2010+.
- atleastoptimal 4y agoDue to the telescoping nature of innovations it was likely a longer and more spaced out series of advances. Nevertheless in business computers were ubiquitous by the 1980s
- dmm10 4y agoYour comment does not reflect history in the U.S.A.. And judging from the GP "our day to day lives" is very much U.S. centric. Transportation: ""By 1981, all GM vehicles would be equipped with their new Computer Command Control System ("CCC") emission control system that featured an ECM (Electronic Control Module) that featured a Motorola 6802 based 8-bit microprocessor manufactured by Delco Electronics. "" https://www.chipsetc.com/computer-chips-inside-the-car.html https://www.chipsetc.com/computer-chips-inside-the-car.html Entertainment - video games: ""we saw the release of all-time classic games such as Pac-man (1980), Mario Bros (1983), The Legend of Zelda (1986), Final Fantasy (1987), Golden Axe (1988), etc."" https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-game-consoles-1967-2011/ https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-home-video-game-c... Financial - personal: ATMs were quite common if no ubiquitous by the mid 1980's "" "The origins of the cashless society: cash dispensers, direct to account payments and the development of on-line real-time networks, c. 1965–1985" "" https://web.archive.org/web/20140714184815/http://www.ebhsoc.org/journal/index.php/journal/article/view/274 https://web.archive.org/web/20140714184815/http://www.ebhsoc... Business: VisiCalc came out in 1979, and spreadsheets were common in business offices in the U.S.A. through the 1980's. Entertainment - TV and movies: Computers were also used in commercial and movie production (ex. the 1984 Macintosh commercial, Pixar founded 1986 more or less out of Lucasfilm, and note that the VideoToaster came out for the Amiga in 1990 bringing professional level video production to a much more accessible price point.)
- waltbosz 4y agoMy mom was a PLATO developer. She wrote computer based learning courses for it. What I remember about PLATO was the games. I think there was one where you could drop a flower pot on Mickey Mouse's head. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
- retrocryptid 4y agoDid she write it in Esperanto? I have a vague memory of cartoon characters doing things you typed in. But the developers thought Esperanto was easier to parse, so they made humans learn it to talk to the computer. Jen kial mi lernis esperanton.
- waltbosz 4y agoI was maybe 6 years old at the time. I don't recall what she coded in.
- formvoltron 4y agoWow that's so cool! My Mom certainly was not a developer, but she was studying nursing at little Bay Du Noc college in the upper peninsula of Michigan and AMAZINGLY there was a computer lab there with those orange round plastic machines and it was completely empty save for one guy that gave me an account and allowed me to chat with someone in California via a dungeon game. I must have been about 11 or 12. Looking back I wish I'd spent more hours in that lab.
- waltbosz 4y agoMy first time using the modern Internet was at a computer lab at the University of Delaware. I was 11 years old and I used it to look up tips for playing Mortal Combat. My PLATO usage also occurred at UD labs. I was even part of a photo shoot for a kid's PLATO summer camp. (I didn't get to attend the camp)
- wombatpm 4y agoUIUC grad here. Used PLATO in 89 for a Physics E&M class. I had friends fail out due to Empire and Avatar guild reset. In the works of the quiz answer parser: no
- welcome_dragon 4y agoPhysics 333?
- jjwiseman 4y agoI was at UIUC in 1988. My first physics class used PLATO quite a lot and it was awesome. I loved going down to the computer lab in the basement of my dorm and using it.
- davidgerard 4y agoHa! There were some PLATO terminals at the University of Western Australia through to the 1990s. I spent a couple of months in 1990 using PLATO to learn to touch-type. My speed dropped from 35wpm to 20wpm, until I built it up again to a peak of 95wpm a few years later, reached by spending hours on IRC typing in complete sentences.
- brianstorms 4y agoAlways wanted to get out to Western Australia and Perth... still hope to visit some day. I have a video somewhere still of Don Bitzer's PLATO demo/presentation that he gave there in 1976 which was aired nationally on ABC in Australia.
- tpmx 4y agoWhile very impressive, I don't really see any clear signs/pieces of evidence that this effort shaped the future, though.
- theodpHN 4y agoComputer History Museum DON BITZER 2022 Fellow https://computerhistory.org/profile/don-bitzer/ https://computerhistory.org/profile/don-bitzer/ For pioneering online education and communities with PLATO and coinventing the plasma display When networks like the Internet were still a research lab curiosity, Don Bitzer's multiuser PLATO system served as a dress rehearsal for what we do on those networks today – learn, teach, collaborate, chat, mail, play games, argue, and more. PLATO's courseware language and touchscreen, multimedia terminals previewed features of decades hence. PLATO was a postcard from the future of online communities, and its example would help make that future real. Donald L. Bitzer was born January 1, 1934 and is an American electrical engineer and computer scientist. He is co-inventor of the flat-panel plasma display and the "father of PLATO,” the world’s earliest time-shared, computer-based education system and home to one of the world’s most pioneering online communities.
- williamDafoe 4y agoXerox PARC stole everything they could from PLATO after their 1972 tour of PLATO and being PhDs never gave credit where credit was due! Picture language, app generator, multilingual fonts, a system so simple even a kid could learn to program it (I did at age 14, self taught), bitmap graphics, etc. When I went to work at Xerox Office Systems Division - the development arm of PARC - I would say that after 13 years of trying - with computers 10x faster - they were PARTIALLY caught up! Highly inferior communications tools, and no support for inter-terminal games . .
- tpmx 4y agoThanks to you and the others for very thorough answers!
- knuckleheadsmif 4y agoI never heard of the Plato connection when I worked on Star in the 80s at Xerox. This is news to me. I’d really like to see more documented proof of this. I also working on the Multilingual stuff (I implemented the bidi stuff in the Star editor) with my friend Joe Becker and never heard of influence from PLATO. I’ll ask directly next time we talk but I just don’t believe it’s true at all.
- djmips 4y agoI feel directly connected to Plato via Silas Warner's Robot War which was very influential for me. It was light years ahead of other micro software at the time and I'm convinced that the Plato cocoon was a major source of ideas and experience for the young Warner.
- MichaelMoser123 4y agofound these videos about the plato system https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmWcGhlXqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmWcGhlXqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THoxsBw-UmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THoxsBw-UmM also there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system) they mention that they were linked by a network, is it known what kind of transport protocol they were using on the CDC systems?
- colinflane 4y agoI first learned of PLATO thru the writing of the CRPG Addict: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-1977.html?m=1 http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2013/10/game-12-oubliette-197...
- NordSteve 4y agoI worked in the PLATO group at CDC from 1980 to 1986, both in authoring system and courseware development. The Magnavox terminal I took as salvage is now in the Computer History Museum, and I still have the wire-wrap prototype IST-3 in my storeroom. Happy to answer any questions that people have.
- brianstorms 4y agoSteve Nord! Nice to see youhere....
- NordSteve 4y agoAhh, sorry to say I'm not the person you're thinking of, Brian. That Steve passed away in 2020.
- fastaguy88 4y agoIn the summer of 1970 as an undergraduate at UIUC, I worked on a "predicting the future" game on PLATO. The idea was, rather than just do some simulation of the future based on a matrix of interactions, we would do the simulation, ask the player what seemed "wrong", and then adjust the interactions. The trick was the tiny amount of memory available for each user -- 63 words -- not enough for much of a matrix. But words could have 8 characters, and we certainly did not need high precision in our interaction matrix, so I ended up packing 8 8-bit words in each variable, using masks and shifts, allowing much larger interaction matrices (I probably used 16x16) Ten years later, the packing/shifting became a central part of one of the first widely used protein sequence similarity searching programs, FASTP (the precursor of FASTA and BLASTP).
- achenatx 4y agojust reiterating this comment PLATO, including avatar (multiple versions), empire, etc are available at https://www.cyber1.org/ https://www.cyber1.org/