Andrew Project
Encyclopedia
The Andrew Project was a distributed computing environment
developed at Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU) beginning in 1982. It was an ambitious project for its time and resulted in an unprecedentedly vast and accessible university computing infrastructure.
, began work on the Andrew Project in 1982. In its initial phase, the project involved both software and hardware,
including wiring the campus for data and developing workstation
s
to be distributed to students and faculty at CMU and elsewhere.
The proposed "3M computer
" workstations included a million pixel display and a megabyte of memory, running at a million instructions per second
.
Unfortunately a fourth M, cost on the order of a megapenny (US$10,000), made the computers beyond the reach of students' budgets.
The initial hardware deployment in 1985 established a number of university-owned
"clusters" of public workstations in various academic buildings and dormitories.
The campus was fully wired and ready for the eventual availability
of inexpensive personal computers.
Early development within the Information Technology Center, originally called VICE (Vast Integrated Computing Environment) and VIRTUE (Virtue Is Reached Through Unix and Emacs), focused on centralized tools, such as a file server, and
workstation tools including a window manager, editor, email, and file system client code.
Initially the system was prototyped on Sun Microsystems
machines, and then to IBM 6150 RT series computers running a special IBM Academic Operating System.
People involved in the project included James H. Morris
, Nathaniel Borenstein
, James Gosling
and David S. H. Rosenthal
.
The project was extended several times after 1985 in order to complete the software,
and was renamed "Andrew" for Andrew Carnegie
and Andrew Mellon,
the founders of the institutions that eventually became Carnegie Mellon University.
Mostly rewritten as a result of experience from early deployments,
Andrew had four major software components:
AFS moved out of the Information Technology Center to Transarc
in 1988. AMS was fully decommissioned and replaced with the Cyrus IMAP server
in 2002.
s. It is an open-source project run at the Department of Computer Science at CMU. The Andrew Consortium governs and maintains the development and distribution of the Andrew User Interface System.
The Andrew User Interface System encompasses three primary components. The Andrew User Environment (AUE) contains the main editor, help system, user interface, and tools for rendering multimedia and embedded objects. The Andrew Toolkit (ATK) contains all of the formattable and embeddable objects, and allows a method for developers to design their own objects. ATK allows for multi-level object embedding, in which objects can be embedded in one another. For example, a raster image object can be embedded into a spreadsheet object. The Andrew Message System (AMS) provides a mail and bulletin board access, which allows the user to send, receive, and organize mail as well as post and read from message boards.
As of version 6.3, the following were components of AUIS:
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
developed at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
(CMU) beginning in 1982. It was an ambitious project for its time and resulted in an unprecedentedly vast and accessible university computing infrastructure.
History
The Information Technology Center, a partnership of Carnegie Mellon and IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, began work on the Andrew Project in 1982. In its initial phase, the project involved both software and hardware,
including wiring the campus for data and developing workstation
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
s
to be distributed to students and faculty at CMU and elsewhere.
The proposed "3M computer
3M computer
3M was a goal first proposed in the early 1980s by Raj Reddy and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University as a minimum specification for academic/technical workstations: at least a megabyte of memory, a megapixel display and a million instructions per second processing power. It was also...
" workstations included a million pixel display and a megabyte of memory, running at a million instructions per second
Instructions per second
Instructions per second is a measure of a computer's processor speed. Many reported IPS values have represented "peak" execution rates on artificial instruction sequences with few branches, whereas realistic workloads typically lead to significantly lower IPS values...
.
Unfortunately a fourth M, cost on the order of a megapenny (US$10,000), made the computers beyond the reach of students' budgets.
The initial hardware deployment in 1985 established a number of university-owned
"clusters" of public workstations in various academic buildings and dormitories.
The campus was fully wired and ready for the eventual availability
of inexpensive personal computers.
Early development within the Information Technology Center, originally called VICE (Vast Integrated Computing Environment) and VIRTUE (Virtue Is Reached Through Unix and Emacs), focused on centralized tools, such as a file server, and
workstation tools including a window manager, editor, email, and file system client code.
Initially the system was prototyped on Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
machines, and then to IBM 6150 RT series computers running a special IBM Academic Operating System.
People involved in the project included James H. Morris
James H. Morris
James Hiram Morris is a Professor of Computer Science. He was previously Dean of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and Dean of Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley.-Biography:...
, Nathaniel Borenstein
Nathaniel Borenstein
Nathaniel S. Borenstein is an American computer scientist.He is one of the original designers of the MIME protocol for formatting multimedia Internet electronic mail.-Biography:...
, James Gosling
James Gosling
James A. Gosling, OC is a computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.-Education and career:In 1977, Gosling received a B.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Calgary...
and David S. H. Rosenthal
David S. H. Rosenthal
- Biography :Rosenthal received an MA degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and a PhD from Imperial College, London.In the 1980s he worked on the Andrew Project at Carnegie Mellon University with James Gosling....
.
The project was extended several times after 1985 in order to complete the software,
and was renamed "Andrew" for Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
and Andrew Mellon,
the founders of the institutions that eventually became Carnegie Mellon University.
Mostly rewritten as a result of experience from early deployments,
Andrew had four major software components:
- The Andrew Toolkit (ATK), a set of tools that allows users to create and distribute documents containing a variety of formatted and embedded objects,
- The Andrew Messaging System (AMS), an email and bulletin board system based on ATK, and
- The Andrew File SystemAndrew file systemThe Andrew File System is a distributed networked file system which uses a set of trusted servers to present a homogeneous, location-transparent file name space to all the client workstations. It was developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew Project. It is named after Andrew...
(AFS), a distributed file system emphasizing scalability for an academic and research environment. - The Andrew window manager (WM), a tiled (non-overlapping windows) window system which allowed remote display of windows on a workstation display. WM was later replaced by X11 from MIT. Its developers, Gosling and Rosenthal, would next develop the NeWSNeWSNeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S. H. Rosenthal...
(Network extensible Window System).
AFS moved out of the Information Technology Center to Transarc
Transarc
Transarc Corporation was a private Pittsburgh-based software company founded in 1989 by Jeffrey Eppinger, Michael Kazar, Alfred Spector, and Dean Thompson of Carnegie Mellon University...
in 1988. AMS was fully decommissioned and replaced with the Cyrus IMAP server
Cyrus IMAP server
The Cyrus IMAP server differs from other IMAP server implementations in that it is generally intended to be run on sealed servers, where normal users cannot log in. The mail spool uses a filesystem layout and format similar to the Maildir format used by other popular email servers such as qmail,...
in 2002.
The Andrew User Interface System
After IBM's funding ended, Andrew continued as an open source project named the Andrew User Interface System. AUIS is a set of tools that allows users to create and distribute documents containing a variety of formatted and embedded objectObject (computer science)
In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...
s. It is an open-source project run at the Department of Computer Science at CMU. The Andrew Consortium governs and maintains the development and distribution of the Andrew User Interface System.
The Andrew User Interface System encompasses three primary components. The Andrew User Environment (AUE) contains the main editor, help system, user interface, and tools for rendering multimedia and embedded objects. The Andrew Toolkit (ATK) contains all of the formattable and embeddable objects, and allows a method for developers to design their own objects. ATK allows for multi-level object embedding, in which objects can be embedded in one another. For example, a raster image object can be embedded into a spreadsheet object. The Andrew Message System (AMS) provides a mail and bulletin board access, which allows the user to send, receive, and organize mail as well as post and read from message boards.
As of version 6.3, the following were components of AUIS:
Applications
- Word processorEZ WordEZ Word was a word processor developed as part of the Andrew User Interface System, a user-interface research project jointly done by both IBM and the Carnegie Mellon University. Originally developed for UNIX systems, it was the first graphical word processor available for Linux.Many people found...
(EZ) - Drawing Editor (Figure)
- Mail and News Reader (Messages)
- Mail and News Sender (SendMessage)
- Font Editor (BDFfont)
- Documentation Browser (Help)
- Directory Browser (Bush)
- Schedule Maintainer (Chump)
- Shell Interface/TerminalComputer terminalA computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
(Console, TypeScript) - AUIS Application Menu (Launch)
- Standard Output Viewer (PipeScript)
- Preferences Editor (PrefEd)
Graphical and Interactive Editors
- Equation Insert (EQ)
- AnimationAnimationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
Editor (Fad) - Drawing Editor (Figure)
- Insert Layout Insert (Layout)
- Display Two Adjacent Inserts (LSet)
- Extension and String Processing Language (Ness)
- Display and Edit Hierarchies (Org)
- Page Flipper (Page)
- MonochromeMonochromeMonochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
BMP Image Editor (Raster) - Spreadsheet Insert (Table)
- Text, Document, and Program Editor (Text)
Further reading
- Morris, J.H., Van Houweling, D., & Slack, K., The Information Technology Center Carnegie Mellon Technical Report CMU-ITC-025, 1983.
External links
- The Andrew Project - CMU's site chronicling the history of the project and the people involved.