Octothorpe/Octathorpe. I'm confused

[Imran Ghory]

On Thu, 8 May 2003, Sam Clements wrote:

>
> Has there been any scholarship done since 1999 to alter the probability =
> that the Bell Labs version is true?

It appears that the word was attributed to Bell Labs prior to the Carlsen
claim (which was apparently first made in Telecommunication Digest in
1995) for instance in this 1990 usenet post,

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9110%40accuvax.nwu.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

If the term was invented at Bell Labs, then verifiying the Macpherson
story would probably only be possible using internal memos and the like. I
had a quick scan through relevent looking articles in Bell Systems
Technical Journal 1961-64 and the term doesn't appear in any of them.

Imran Ghory
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran