Currently listening: The Friendly Orange Glow The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear 📚

I’m not very far into this, but one detail that makes me smile: the early PLATO keyboards had an “aha” key. “Aha” was how you exited the help system, as in “aha, I found the information I needed”.

From a 1965 paper on PLATO:

If he had difficulty with a question, he could push the button labelled “help”. The “help” button took the student into a help sequence which pertained to the question. The logic in a help sequence was similar to the logic in the main sequence. The student was presented with additional explanatory material and “help material”. Each question in a help sequence had to be answered correctly before proceeding further through the help sequence.

After completing a help sequence the student automatically returned to the question he was trying to answer in the main sequence.

However, if the student wished to return to the main sequence from any point in the help sequence, he could push the button labelled “aha”. An additional request for help on the same question would return the student to his previous position in the help sequence.