On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 12:26 PM Stephen Clark <sclark46@earthlink.net> wrote:
 
May have had to do with the first terminal commonly used with UNIX.

The Model 33 

In fact the Labs had the more recent Model 37, which did lower case, unlike the 33.  Consequently, Unix was (I think) the first case-sensitive operating system.  However, it had to work on 33s as well; if you tried to log in using an uppercase username, login would turn on the IUCLC and OLCUC bits of /dev/tty, and if you needed an uppercase letter you had to escape it (I think with \), which the tty driver processed.

Thanks to everyone for filling in all the gaps in the chain from dollar bills to 80-column terminal windows that I had left implicit.  To clarify my position, what I am opposed to is not the use of 80-column windows for *reading* email.  I'm not happy with what happens to text that is hard-wrapped at 80 columns when displayed in a narrower window, as often happens to me now that I use larger fonts than I used to.  The text/format-flowed MIME type was supposed to help with this problem, but never really caught on.



"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>