Computer Dictionary of Information Technology

Terminal Oriented Social Science

(TOSS) The Cambridge Project Project MAC was an ARPA-funded political science computing project. They worked on topics like survey analysis and simulation, led by Ithiel de Sola Pool, J.C.R. Licklider and Douwe B. Yntema. Yntema had done a system on the MIT Lincoln Labs TX-2 called the Lincoln Reckoner, and in the summer of 1969 led a Cambridge Project team in the construction of an experiment called TOSS. TOSS was like Logo, with matrix operators. A major feature was multiple levels of undo, back to the level of the login session. This feature was cheap on the Lincoln Reckoner, but absurdly expensive on Multics.