[SIGCIS-Members] Jensen's decimal print routine?

[Johannah Rodgers]

Jeff,

This is an intriguing question!  I will definitely look into it.

All best,

Johannah

On Fri, May 15, 2026 at 2:09 PM Jeffrey Starr via Members
<members at lists.sigcis.org> wrote:
>
> One of the technical anecdotes in Steven Levy's *Hackers* is about Jensen's decimal print routine. Described as a "tall, silent hacker from Maine" (pg 33), Jensen wrote a decimal print routine for the TX-0 that did not use a table of powers of ten and fit within 46 instructions, less than the 50 instructions thought necessary.
>
> Is there a copy of this algorithm?
>
> The Computer History Museum archives include some TX-0 paper tape artifacts, but the description of the contents is minimal. I've also looked at Bitsaver's collection of TX-0 documents, but this doesn't seem to be included.
>
>
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