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From: mogul@Shasta.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: apocryphal story about ESS crashes - can someone confirm it?
Message-ID: <3957@Shasta.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 22-Mar-85 16:00:19 EST
Article-I.D.: Shasta.3957
Posted: Fri Mar 22 16:00:19 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Mar-85 03:57:56 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 31

Many years ago, I heard this story, and I was wondering if anybody
could confirm it:

    Back when this was still an unusual event, a new ESS exchange was
    installed and turned on.  Ma Bell, proud of her new child, invited the
    press in to be dazzled by modern, reliable, computer technology.

    After the obligatory tours and speeches, the photographers wanted to
    take some pictures.  Someone must have thought that a magtape drive
    would make a good picture, since it looked like part of a real
    computer.  A photographer pushed the shutter, the flash went off, and
    the ESS promptly crashed.

    Why did the ESS crash when the flash went off, you wonder?  So did Ma.
    It turns out that the tape drives had optical sensors for the foil
    end-of-tape markers.  Apparently, the photo flash set off the sensors
    when the ESS program wasn't expecting end-of-tape, and the program
    jumped off into hyperspace.  (One version of the story is that the
    drives had two sensors, one for detecting each end of the tape.  The
    programmer who coded this part of the program never expected the tape
    to run off both ends at the same time.)

    In spite of the vaunted reprogrammability of the ESS, it turned out to
    be too dangerous to fix the software bug immediately (it might break
    something else).  So, all the tape drives in all the ESS exchanges were
    fitted with little opaque hoods over their end-of-tape sensors.

It's a good story, even if it isn't true, but did this really happen?
If it did, do I have the details right?

-Jeff