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The Unix room #unix

🕡︎ - 2023-12-16

On The Unix Heritage Society mailing list the story that Bell Labs (now owned by Nokia) is leaving the building that Unix was created in at Murray Hill.

Ken Thompson shared a story about an electrical practical joke and Noel Chiappa followed up with a story about an eletrical prank where he ended up powering an entire floor down.

As an interesting flourish to the story he mentions how there was a hack that allowed people to summon the building's elevator from their terminals by pressing ESC e, with a link directly to the code.

Fun stuff:

;THIS TABLE SAYS WHICH FLOOR TO CALL THE ELEVATOR TO FOR <ESC>E

ELETAB:	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 0	809 FAHLMAN, HOLLOWAY, KNIGHT
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 1	810 LAVIN, KUIPERS, MILLER
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	; 2	919 Very Small Data Bases NORTH (FAR END)
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 3	812 YVONNE
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 4	813 HEWITT
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 5	814 SUSSMAN
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	; 6	808 FREILING, ULLMAN
	.BYTE	0	; 7
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;10	817 JABARI
	.BYTE	0	;11
	.BYTE	0	;12
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;13	819 GOLDSTEIN
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;14	820 MINSKY
	.BYTE	0	;15
	.BYTE	0	;16
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;17	821A  MARR
	.BYTE	0	;20
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;21	824 RICH, DEKLEER
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;22	825 Sjoberg
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;23	826 Fredkin
	.BYTE	ELKMS8	;24	815 Horn
	.BYTE	0	;25
	.BYTE	0	;26
	.BYTE	0	;27
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;30	925 MOON'S REFRIGERATOR
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;31	902 TAENZER, MASON
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;32	919 Very Small Data losers
	.BYTE	0	;33	334 EDWARDS, LEBEL
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;34	913 BAISLEY, GREENBLATT
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;35	914 COHEN, GOSPER, ETC.
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;36	912 9TH FLOOR LOUNGE
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;37	907 CHESS, LISP MACHINES
	.BYTE	ELKMS9	;40	906 Lisp Machines

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