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.
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@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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