bucky bits

/buh'kee bits/ 1. Obsolete. The bits produced by the CONTROL

and META shift keys on a SAIL keyboard (octal 200 and 400

respectively), resulting in a 9-bit keyboard character set.

The MIT AI TV (Knight) keyboards extended this with TOP and

separate left and right CONTROL and META keys, resulting in a

12-bit character set; later, LISP Machines added such keys as

SUPER, HYPER, and GREEK (see space-cadet keyboard).

2. By extension, bits associated with "extra" shift keys on

any keyboard, e.g. the ALT on an IBM PC or command and option

keys on a Macintosh.

It has long been rumored that "bucky bits" were named after

Buckminster Fuller during a period when he was consulting at

Stanford. Actually, bucky bits were invented by Niklaus Wirth

when *he* was at Stanford in 1964--65; he first suggested the

idea of an EDIT key to set the 8th bit of an otherwise 7 bit

ASCII character. It seems that, unknown to Wirth, certain

Stanford hackers had privately nicknamed him "Bucky" after a

prominent portion of his dental anatomy, and this nickname

transferred to the bit. Bucky-bit commands were used in a

number of editors written at Stanford, including most notably

TV-EDIT and NLS.

The term spread to MIT and CMU early and is now in general

use. Ironically, Wirth himself remained unaware of its

derivation for nearly 30 years, until GLS dug up this

history in early 1993! See double bucky, quadruple bucky.

(2001-06-22)