TriadCity Message of the Day
2020-10-17

The Southern Third's Royal Museum of Technology and Society has a new interactive exhibit: a random quotes program from 1980 with a massive collection of quotations from that period. Written back in the day by our own TelGar — Gary Smith — we've emulated it inside TriadCity as part of our ongoing focus on keeping earlier eras of digital entertainment alive.

Gary's explanation:

In 1980, I was managing the research/student computer center at New Mexico Tech as well as teaching some computer science classes. The computer system had many interesting programs, one would generate paragraphs of PG 13 porn commonly found in romance novels. Another Fortune Cookies and a third would write SciFi technobabble (this might still be being used in online help manuals). One of my students was a retired Unitarian minister who felt that something more uplifting was needed. I wrote a Pray program in response to his request. Initially largely populated with Robert Heinlein quotes, it grew over time. Key-punched from text by another student — Paleolithic times in Information Technology!

Developed originally in Fortran or Basic circa 1980 on a PDP-10 running TOPS 20.

Send thoughts, ideas, praise, critiques, money to gary@smartmonsters.com.

Our emulation is built with updated technology, but the results are identical.

Walk your character to the Museum, find the "Quotes by Gary, 1980" exhibit, type 'quote'.

Meet you in the city!

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