Posted by Alan Hakim on November 04, 2004 at 11:13:14 from 213.166.17.22 user awhakim.
In Reply to: Re: despatch or dispatch posted by John Nichols on November 03, 2004 at 22:20:52:
The antiquity of those references doesn't help Ed about spelling – we need citations from the period after spelling settled down. Yet in all those definitions, there doesn't seem to be the modern usage of 'cause to happen next in a queue'. I believe airports have dispatchers who dispatch flights in order, and probably they are used in surface traffic too. And as I mentioned yesterday, computer control programs dispatch tasks in order of priority.