Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!purdue!ames!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Origin of term "Emacs"
Keywords: Etymology, Emacs
Message-ID: <26527@news.Think.COM>
Date: 10 Aug 89 18:12:24 GMT
References: <2481@orion.cf.uci.edu> <57187@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <2525@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 19

In article <2525@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> rgr@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (robert.g.robillard) writes:
>Can anyone out there give me the defintive relationship between the
>name "Emacs" and the Boston Ice Cream parlour "Emac and Bolio's"?
>I can't believe that it's a coincidence, particularly considering
>the relationship between Steve's Ice Cream and the Lisp Flavours
>system.

Well, I don't know whether EMACS was named after the ice cream parlor
or not.  However, the name similarity WAS eventually noticed by the
folks at the MIT AI Lab.  The Lisp Machines developed there originally
included a text formatter called Bolio (the Lisp Machine text editor
is called Zmacs).  However, the Flavors object-oriented programming
system definitely WAS patterned after Steve's Ice Cream.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar