21 Mar
2018
21 Mar
'18
12:53 a.m.
On 2018-03-20 2:24 PM, Bakul Shah wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 14:04:38 -0400 Dan Cross
<crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dan Cross writes:
OK, but where did Maxwell get it? :-)
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 1:56 PM, George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
I think daemon/demon came from printers demon, which is carved into
Fernando J. Corbato: ... Our use of the word daemon (@
Project MAC in 1963) was inspired by the Maxwell's daemon of
physics and thermodynamics. (My background is Physics.)
Maxwell's daemon was an imaginary agent which helped sort
molecules of different speeds and worked tirelessly in the
background. We fancifully began to use the word daemon to
describe background processes which worked tirelessly to
perform system chores.
the government printing office in Brisbane. the
printers demon is the
one which stuffed up letters in the tray, to make printers tear their
hair out. Did I say tray? I meant case, upper case, the one above,
with the big letters, and lower case, the case with the little
letters. oh dear. really? is that why they are cases?
While this story (and the others I trimmed for brevity) is (are) great,
"daemon" is actually from the Greek, I believe: an intermediary between
humans (users) and the gods (the kernel).