Talk:LINC

Early history and names

I'm curious about the source for the changes to the name.

I would tend to put a fair amount of faith in Severo Ornstein's Computing in the Middle Ages, since he was there at the time. On the other hand, that as written decades later, and his memory might have dropped a few bits. Are there some contemporary documents from Lincoln and MIT that you are relying on? I took a quick look on Bitsavers, but didn't see anything.

'Computing in the Middle Ages' confirms that the machine was initially named the 'α-Linc'. However, it insists that the name then became 'LINC' at Lincoln, shortly later (pg. 140 of the PDF). What else can I look at? Jnc (talk) 09:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I think "Early and Small" is the premier reference for LINC history. For one, it was written by Wes Clark referring to his notebooks, and second, it was written in 1986 which is closer in time than "Middle Ages". Direct link: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/12178.12187

Texts vary between Greek α or spelled out alpha or Alpha. It's unclear to me whether "Alpha Linc" was the initial name for the computers in general, or if it was only applied to the first prototype machine as in "alpha version".

There's a similar variation in micro-LINC = μ-LINC = μLINC. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 08:08, 1 November 2025 (UTC)