I believe the term "workstation" came from the integrated interactive
engineering design terminals/systems. Can't remember details, but
companies like ComputerVision had had them before UNIX and 68000 were a
thing,
On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 7:31 PM Joseph Holsten <joseph(a)josephholsten.com>
wrote:
It seems like there are bountiful articles able the
decline and fall of
the UNIX workstation, but I’ve had a hard time finding narrative about
workstations prior to the Stanford SUN workstation.
* was the SUN-1 the first commercially successful product? What are the
“it depends” edge cases?
* were there common recipes for proto-workstations within academic or
industrial research? What did those look like, who was involved?
* What do I really mean by workstation? Ex.gr. If an installation had a
PDP-11 with a single terminal and operator, is it not a workstation? Is it
the integration of display into the system that differentiates?
--
Joseph Holsten
http://josephholsten.com
mailto:joseph@josephholsten.com
tel:+1-360-927-7234 <(360)%20927-7234>