Prologue to TPC. Bob Morris did a visiting-researcher stint at AT&T, where he became aware of infelicitous software architure proposed for ESS 5. He thought Research could do it better. Ken, Joe, and Lee bit. Lee's architecture was indeed novel: every device in the system, right down to each touch-tone button, was modeled as a process. Only after the clean model was working were some processes--notably the buttons--jammed together to cinch in the process table. The team got the switch working in a matter of months--in time to demonstrate it to Indian Hill before ESS was irrevocably set in stone. ESS architecture was indeed rethought, taking some ideas from TPC. TPC was named after "TPC, The Phone Company" in the 1967 film, "The President's Analyst". Doug