Expensive Typewriter

Expensive Typewriter was a text editing program that ran on the DEC PDP-1 computer recently delivered at MIT. Because it could drive a Friden Flexowriter (a letter-quality printer), it was arguably the first word processing program although it definitely was not WYSIWYG, having no CRT display. It was written and improved between 1961 and 1962 by Steve Piner and L. Peter Deutsch.

It was called "expensive typewriter" because at the time the PDP-1 cost a small fortune (approximately $100,000 US$).

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