5.0606 More on SPOOL (3/44)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 19 Jan 1992 12:05:08 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0606. Sunday, 19 Jan 1992.
(1) Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 20:39:43 CST (18 lines)
From: (James Marchand) <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: spool
(2) Date: Fri, 17 Jan 92 08:41 EST (10 lines)
From: <DACOLEMAN@FAIR1>
Subject: RE: 5.0602 SPOOL and other Memories (4/78)
(3) Date: Sat, 18 Jan 92 11:36:26 EST (16 lines)
From: Ralf Thiede <FEN00RT1@UNCCVM>
Subject: SPOOL
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 92 20:39:43 CST
From: (James Marchand) <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: spool
The acronym was formed on the basis of the common term for "reels" of paper,
later mag tape. One used to even call the huge rolls of wire the TVA used
"spools", and we used to take the wooden cores left over and turn them on
their sides and use them as picnic tables. I remember working on the old
MIDAC machine at Michigan in the early 50s as a peon. We Germans called the
process of putting things on spools for storage instead of cards "abspuelen",
I have no idea why, but why anything? As for the word spool itself, which
Skeat defines as "a reel ...", it seems to have come into English from
Dutch back during the days of the Industrial Revolution. Why we began to
call spools reels is another question. I have an old wire recording "reel"
from ca. 1948, and it is called spool. I should point out that the German
word spulen (no umlaut) means "to roll up on a spool, reel"; in German a
take-up reel abspult.
Jim Marchand
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------12----
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 92 08:41 EST
From: <DACOLEMAN@FAIR1>
Subject: RE: 5.0602 SPOOL and other Memories (4/78)
Micro-note: and yes, a reel of tape can too be called a spool--especially
when the analogy is made between tape and earlier wire recording contrivances.
Don Coleman
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 92 11:36:26 EST
From: Ralf Thiede <FEN00RT1@UNCCVM>
Subject: SPOOL
Mary Dee Harris (<MDHARRIS@guvax.georgetown.edu>) pointed out quite cor-
rectly in HUMANIST vol. 5 No. 0602 that _spool_ as a computer term would
probably not refer to a physical storage device since that is a _reel_--
or, at that time, a stack of cards. My speculation is that _spool_ made
a good acronym because of its meaning as a verb, not as a noun. If you
think of a file as a thread of information to be fed to a holding device
and then again to a peripheral device, then one may imagine that thread
to be "spooled" (similar to German _spulen_ / _abspulen_). Anyway, the
acronym (_Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off-Line_) looks to me as if
it was designed to fit the word _spool_. Ralf Thiede
UNCC Dept. of English
<FEN00RT1@UNCCVM>