bucky bits


bucky bits

/buh'kee bits/ 1. Obsolete. The bits produced by the CONTROLand META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400respectively), resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set.The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP andseparate left and right CONTROL and META keys, resulting in a12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines added such keys asSUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see space-cadet keyboard).

2. By extension, bits associated with "extra" shift keys onany keyboard, e.g. the ALT on an IBM PC or command and optionkeys on a Macintosh.

It has long been rumored that "bucky bits" were named afterBuckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting atStanford. Actually, bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirthwhen *he* was at Stanford in 1964--65; he first suggested theidea of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7 bitASCII character. It seems that, unknown to Wirth, certainStanford hackers had privately nicknamed him "Bucky" after aprominent portion of his dental anatomy, and this nicknametransferred to the bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in anumber of editors written at Stanford, including most notablyTV-EDIT and NLS.

The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in generaluse. Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of itsderivation for nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up thishistory in early 1993! See double bucky, quadruple bucky.