Byte sizes (was Re: 2.8M 3.5' floppy (was: three and a quarter loppy?)

[blstuart at bellsouth.net]

In message <op.sno3dpaxisslla at yngve.home.norbionics.com>, =?utf-8?Q?Bj=C3=B8rn?
= writes:
>Hm - yes, I remember he got sidetracked by typesetting problems.
>It took a very long time before it hit the bookstores. I think we were  
>writing MIX-simulators based on mimeographed excerpts, I did not get the  
>book until long after I left university.

Was it a translation issue?  Volume 1 was originally published
in 1968.  The trigger for developing TeX was the galleys for
the second edition of Volume 2.  His reaction was that if his
books were going to look like that, it was time to stop writing!
Fortunately for us, there's probably no one better at mastering
the history of a technology, distilling it to its essence and
building a new application on it.  The set of Vols 1-3 I got
for high school graduation in '80 is all done pre-TeX even
though Knuth had an early version running in '78.

Brian L. Stuart