Editing Blit (computer terminal) (section)

==History==
The Blit programmable [[bitmap]] [[computer graphics|graphics]] [[computer terminal|terminal]] was designed by [[Rob Pike]] and Bart Locanthi Jr. of [[Bell Labs]] in 1982. The Blit technology was commercialized by [[American Telephone & Telegraph|AT&T]] and [[Teletype_Corporation|Teletype]]. In 1984, the '''DMD''' (dot-mapped display) '''5620''' was released,<ref>[http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/att/5620/ AT&T/Teletype 5620 Dot Mapped Display Terminal]</ref> followed by models '''630&nbsp;MTG''' (multi-tasking graphics) in 1987 and '''730&nbsp;MTG''' in 1989. The 5620 used a [[Western Electric]] 32100 processor (aka [[Bellmac 32]]) and had a 15" green phosphor display with 800×1024×1 resolution (66×88 characters in the initial text mode) interlaced at 30&nbsp;Hz. The 630 and 730 had [[Motorola 68000]] processors and a 1024×1024×1 monochrome display at 60&nbsp;Hz (most had amber displays, but some had white or green displays).

The [[folk etymology]] for the ''Blit'' name is that it stands for ''Bell Labs Intelligent Terminal'', and its creators have also joked that it actually stood for ''Bacon, Lettuce, and Interactive Tomato''. However, Rob Pike's paper on the Blit explains that it was named after the second syllable of ''[[bit blit]]'', a common name for the bit-block transfer operation that is fundamental to the terminal's graphics.<ref>{{cite journal
  | first = Rob
  | last = Pike
  | authorlink = Rob Pike
  | title = The Blit: A Multiplexed Graphics Terminal
  | url = http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/blit/
  |journal=AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal
  |volume=63
  |issue=8
  |year=1984
  |pages=1607–1631
| doi = 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1984.tb00056.x
 | s2cid = 34062559
 | url-access = subscription
  }}</ref>  Its original nickname was ''Jerq'', inspired by a joke used during a demo of a Three Rivers' [[PERQ]] graphic workstation and used with permission.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgz37wwYfmHJ_7kZx_T=-zwNJ50PhS7r0kCpuf_F1mDkww@mail.gmail.com/ |title=Re: [TUHS] Blit source |last=Pike |first=Rob |date=19 December 2019 |publisher=TUHS |access-date=29 October 2020 |quote=The name, originally coined for a fun demo of the Three Rivers Perq by folks at Lucasfilm, was borrowed with permission by us}}</ref>