Emacs Turns 50

Emacs, one of the first full-screen text editors that revolutionized programming, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year after first running on video terminals at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1976. The software's powerful core concepts led to its adoption across multiple operating systems, including Mac OS X, and helped catalyze the modern free software movement and GNU/Linux operating system. Emacs evolved from earlier text editing tools like TECO and Control-R, with Richard M. Stallman's key innovations making it dramatically more usable than previous editing methods.