Focal Notes and Background

This document is a personal memoir by Richard M. Merrill, the creator of the FOCAL (Formula Calculator) programming language, detailing its history and development at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during the 1960s.

Key Highlights:

• Development: Merrill recounts his early career at the Instrumentation Lab and Adams Associates, leading to his employment at DEC in 1966. He explains that FOCAL was designed to be a fully interactive, interrupt-driven language for minicomputers, specifically aiming to provide a superior user experience by focusing on practical tasks rather than just demonstrations.
• Innovation: FOCAL was groundbreaking as the first interrupt-driven, self-starting, and multi-user software for minicomputers.
• Anecdotes: The text includes stories of overcoming technical hurdles, such as fixing "dyslexic" computer bugs, surviving power outages during live demonstrations without needing a reboot, and implementing creative technical solutions like the "smart keyboard" (Smaky). It also features humorous stories about FOCAL's resilience in industrial settings, including a computer that survived a lanolin spill and an industrial application that included an emergency dynamite "backup" system.
• Legacy: The document concludes with a list of FOCAL-related artifacts donated by Merrill to the Computer History Museum and information about ongoing efforts to preserve FOCAL’s history through digital archives.