Editing Spell checker (section)

===Pre-PC===
In 1961, [[Les Earnest]], who headed the research on this budding technology, saw it necessary to include the first spell checker that accessed a list of 10,000 acceptable words.<ref>{{cite web|last=Earnest|first=Les|title=The First Three Spelling Checkers|url=http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/spelling.pdf|publisher=Stanford University|access-date=10 October 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022091418/http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/spelling.pdf|archive-date=22 October 2012}}</ref> Ralph Gorin, a graduate student under Earnest at the time, created the first true spelling checker program written as an applications program (rather than research) for general English text: SPELL for the DEC PDP-10 at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in February 1971.<ref>{{cite book
|last=Peterson |first=James |title=Computer Programs for Detecting and Correcting Spelling Errors
|date=December 1980 |url= http://simson.net/ref/2006/csci_e-180/ref/spelling-p676-peterson.pdf
|access-date=2011-02-18}}</ref>  Gorin wrote SPELL in [[assembly language]], for faster action; he made the first spelling corrector by searching the word list for plausible correct spellings that differ by a single letter or adjacent letter transpositions and presenting them to the user.  Gorin made SPELL publicly accessible, as was done with most SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) programs, and it soon spread around the world via the new ARPAnet, about ten years before personal computers came into general use.<ref>{{cite book
    |last=Earnest |first=Les
    |title=Visible Legacies for Y3K
    |url=https://stanford.edu/~learnest/legacies.pdf
    |access-date=2011-02-18 |url-status=dead
    |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720044806/http://stanford.edu/~learnest/legacies.pdf
    |archive-date=2011-07-20}}</ref>  SPELL, its algorithms and data structures inspired the Unix ''ispell'' program.
  
The first spell checkers were widely available on mainframe computers in the late 1970s.  A group of six linguists from [[Georgetown University]] developed the first spell-check system for the IBM corporation.<ref name="cled.georgetown.edu">{{cite web
|url=http://cled.georgetown.edu/faculty
|title=Georgetown U Faculty & Staff: The Center for Language, Education & Development
|access-date=2008-12-18
|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090205140452/http://cled.georgetown.edu/faculty
|archive-date=2009-02-05}}, citation: "Maria Mariani... was one of a group of six linguists from Georgetown University who developed the first spell-check system for the IBM corporation."</ref>

[[Henry Kučera]] invented one for the VAX machines of Digital Equipment Corp in 1981.<ref>{{Cite news
|title=Teaching Computers to Spell (obituary for Henry Kučera)
|last=Harvey |first=Charlotte Bruce |date=May–June 2010
|work=Brown Alumni Magazine |page=79|url=https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2010-05-13/teaching-computers-to-spell}}</ref>