It's probably listed in one of Melinda's papers, or her fascinating "History of VM". The way I recall it, at one SHARE (maybe in SF?) Sandra Hassenplug went shopping instead of to the General session. She came across a roll of the now famous teddy bear stickers, buying several feet of them. She had been looking for a way for the relatively few VM'ers at SHARE to find each other, and thought that stickers, like the "I've been greeted by #1" stickers given by the guy who always was the first to register for each SHARE, would be a good means. She considered the teddy bear a warm, friendly icon of the VM operating system. Thus was born the first mainframe operating system icon/mascot.
When Marty Zimelis lead the VM Program, he always explained that history at the VM Program opening session. You can search this listserve for a previous posting with more (maybe more accurate) details, including the history behind Edgar Beargen, the poor stuffed teddy bear that my wife and I created and which I continue to torture by mounting him on a copper pipe atop the "Linux and VM Program table" at each SHARE evening reception. Mike Walter Hewitt Associates Mike Walter ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chip Davis" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11/08/2008 04:01 AM GMT To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Wired delenda est Correct me if I'm wrong Phil, but wasn't the VM bear the creation of the SHARE VM Project when they were looking for a symbol to represent the most user-friendly operating system? I know it goes 'way back. -Chip- On 11/7/08 12:45 Phil Smith III said:
http://www.wired.com/culture/design/multimedia/2007/04/gallery_mascots?slide=9&slideView=2 Someone at /. has conflated the VM bear and V/Bear, though: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/25/1233212 (Gee, someone at /. getting something wrong! How remarkable! But his heart's in the right place.) ...phsiii
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