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efaq: Origin of the term Emacs

 
 4.1 Where does the name “Emacs” come from?
 ==========================================
 
 Emacs originally was an acronym for Editor MACroS.  RMS says he “picked
 the name Emacs because <E> was not in use as an abbreviation on ITS at
 the time.” The first Emacs was a set of macros written in 1976 at MIT by
 RMS for the editor TECO (Text Editor and COrrector, originally Tape
 Editor and COrrector) under ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) on
 a PDP-10.  RMS had already extended TECO with a “real-time” full-screen
 mode with reprogrammable keys.  Emacs was started by Guy Steele as a
 project to unify the many divergent TECO command sets and key bindings
 at MIT, and completed by RMS.
 
    Many people have said that TECO code looks a lot like line noise; you
 can read more at <news:alt.lang.teco>.  Someone has written a TECO
 come with Emacs::); it would be an interesting project to run the
 original TECO Emacs inside of Emacs.
 
    For some not-so-serious alternative reasons for Emacs to have that
 name, check out the file ‘etc/JOKES’ (File-name conventions).
 

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