Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS
From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: re: historical artifacts
Message-ID: <19881021121126.3.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 88 12:11:00 GMT
References: <8810211055.AA00440@OLIVER.MIT.EDU>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 16


    Date: Fri, 21 Oct 88 06:55:50 EDT
    From: Mark W. Eichin <eichin@athena.mit.edu>

    The way I heard the story was that the Athena needed something to get
    rid of the screensaver, when we had VS100's running X10 that were used
    by students registering for accounts -- otherwise non-technical
    students would assume they were broken. So, Tony DellaFera (DEC
    employee @Athena) wrote an early version of xclock.

My recollection is that some of the early programs used at Athena
(including account registration) were built on top of a BLOX(sp?)
interface that didn't know how to refresh after an exposure event.
Screen-saver on a VS100 caused exposures, and it was the non-refresh
that caused the brokenness assumption (fact, actually).  Yes, xclock was
originally created to defeat screen-saver.