Beating the memory drum: Rapid sequential visual presentation (RSVP) on a 4K PDP-8

A program for presenting alphanumeric strings in rapid succession on a Videoterminal is described. Rates of up to 30 items/sec can be obtained with relatively “slow” systems by creating a push-up stack in the terminal’s display memory and scrolling the items past a small display window during presentation. Advantages of such a program are discussed, and the system is compared to mechanical techniques of rapid sequential visual presentation.