The MIT ~PWB1 system had a thing called
'dpy', I think written at MIT
based on 'ps' (and no doubt inspired by ITS' PEEK)
Indeed my hidden agenda was to find a link between top and PEEK.
But apparently the inspiration came from VMS:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170527120123/http://www.unixtop.org:80/about.s…