Peripheral Interchange Program
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The Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP) was a utility to transfer data files on Digital Equipment Corporation's computers. It was first implemented on the PDP-6 sometime in the 1960's. It was subsequently implemented on both the DEC-10 and PDP-11.
PIP was originally named ATLATL, which was an acronym for "Anything Lord to Anything Lord". This described its purpose as a device independent file copying tool.
After some use, it was finally realized that the hand-crafted syntax:
PIP destination:source
actually was inverted from common English usage. Thus the command:
COPY source destination
syntax was born, one of the dozens of utilities that resided on the PDP and DEC machines. As late as the mid 1970s, PIP was in common use, alongside its descendant.
After Gary Kildall started CP/M, he took the PIP and file concepts as well. The protean utilities which move data can also be seen in the UNIX command:
cp source destination
which also ran on the Teletype workstations of the early 1970s and which survive in the various DOS versions.