8-bit acorn hardware • Etymology of FRED, JIM, and SHEILA

I know what FRED, JIM, and SHEILA are, but for the longest time (decades!) I've wondered how they got their names. Does anyone here have an authoritative answer? I asked Steve Furber a few years ago, but he couldn't recall that details. The only thing that sounds vaguely plausible is thew FRED, JIM, and SHEILA are just meta-syntactic variable names (rather like foo, bar, and bar), but I'd love to know the definitive answer if possible. Does anyone have any ideas, or better, know?

Cheers,

Rich

Statistics: Posted by rich — Mon Jun 30, 2025 1:07 am

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