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TIL that "spool" as used in "print spooler" is an acronym that stands for "Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line". Image is an excerpt from Inside AppleTalk, Second Edition, page 14-3.

Although there may be some disagreement: is it a backronym? (Missing verification.) See the Wikipedia page for more. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooling

*Edited to include backronym reference from Wikipedia page.

#RetroComputing #VintageComputing

THE WORD SPOOL is an acronym for Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line, and a print spooler is a hardware application or a software application (or both) that is used to store data on a disk temporarily until the printer is ready to process it. Since the print spooler handles the interaction required with the printer in order to accomplish the printing process, use of a spooler frees the originating computer, such as an Apple Macintosh computer, to perform other activities during the printing process. This chapter describes AppleTalk print spooling in general and compares printing with a spooler to printing without a spooler. In addition, since print spooling can be accomplished either by a spooler/server or as a background process on the originating computer, this chapter also compares these two options.

intermediate store of data

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This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to paulrickards

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Tom Greene

I almost didn't believe it... but I found this description in an IBM document from 1966. (source: archive.org/details/bitsavers_…)
In some programming systems, either batch or SPOOL file-to-file utilities can be processed. Batch file-to-file utilities are run independently when no other program is being run. SPOOL (Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line) utility programs are designed to maximize total job throughput. For example, if one program does not require the full I/O capacity of the system, other peripheral operations can concurrently use the I/O facilities that would otherwise be idle. Also, a program that normally uses slow speed I/O devices (such as printers, card readers, and card punches) can direct its output to high speed I/O devices (such as magnetic tape or disk units). Later, a SPOOL operation can transfer this data from the high-speed to a low-speed I/O device if concurrent programs do not need this pair of I/O devices.

ibm :: 360 :: fe :: 2030 :: Y24-3360-1 2030 FE Theory Opns Jun67 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

From the bitsavers.org collection, a scanned-in computer-related document.ibm :: 360 :: fe :: 2030 :: Y24-3360-1 2030 FE Theory Opns Jun67
Internet Archive
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