A graphical 'patch language' interface (Oedit, 1980) predated Max's patcher GUI by seven years, per Puckette's own account

maxcomputer-musicvisual-programmingpatch-cordshistory-of-computing

claim-max-patch-cords-borrowed-from-analog-modular-synthesizers already established that the word "patch cords" comes from analog modular synthesizer cabling. Puckette's "Max at Seventeen" (2002) adds a second, distinct borrowing: the graphical patch-language interface itself predates Max within computer music software. He writes: "In 1980 while studying under Barry Vercoe I saw the Oedit system by Richard Steiger and Roger Hale, apparently never described in a published paper, with which one designed Music11 orchestras using a visual patch language.''" And: "Many other graphical patch languages — both for music and for other applications — had appeared by 1987 when I started writing the Max patching" GUI. Although several specific elements might have been novel... the overall idea of a graphical patch language was not."

So Max borrowed twice from prior art within its own field — the word from synthesizer hardware, the graphical-patching concept from Oedit and unnamed contemporaries — neither traceable to Jack Dennis or academic dataflow research. Oedit itself is a minor historical curiosity: Richard Steiger and Roger Hale's system was, per Puckette, "apparently never described in a published paper," making it an unrecoverable primary in its own right — no entity page was created for it or its authors this session, on the judgment that a single, undocumented mention doesn't clear the bar for a hub (see the promoting capture's journal entry).