<ul><li>Implementing a spellchecker with limited memory in the 1970s led to a lossless compression algorithm still in use today.</li><li>In 1975, AT&T programmers used Unix as a text processor and needed a functional spell-checking system.</li><li>The challenge was fitting a 250 kb file into just 64 kB of RAM.</li><li>Douglas McIlroy developed an algorithm that used 14 bits of memory per word, achieving impressive compression for the time.</li></ul>

Implementing a spellchecker on 64 kB of RAM back in the 1970s led to a compression algorithm that's technically unbeaten and part of it is still in use today

Implementing a spellchecker on 64 kB of RAM back in the 1970s led to a compression algorithm that's technically unbeaten and part of it is still in use today

Discover more