Comment by bane

14 years ago

I think it was the first commercial computer to support it, but much of the theoretical groundwork wasn't really figured out till 68 and 70

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=363095.363141

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=356571.356573

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bane

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gruseom  14 years ago

That sounds like the old joke, "I can see that it works in practice but will it work in theory?" If the Burroughs guys both invented it and commercialized it then surely they should get the credit for it.

The story is in this wonderful memoir: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2928672).

  • bane  14 years ago

    I agree, I hadn't heard of the Burroughs guys until this post. The two papers I linked to were always the earliest ones I was aware of.

    There's a surprising amount of stuff that gets built though without understanding all of the theory behind it. So it doesn't surprise me if a "pre-theory" example of VM was built.

    After all, we had the wheel for thousands of years before figuring out PI.