> I recently got an Atari ST emulator running on my laptop and
> noticed something curious...there was a menu option on the
> desktop called "Blitter" which IIRC sped up the graphics display.
> I wonder if anyone here knows if this has any relationship to BitBlt?

This feature is much newer than the programming related hardware/etc
documentation I have (from 1986/87) on that machine but in the owners
manual for MegaSTe (from 1990)

[ Ahh... for the days when an owner's manual had things like IO port
pinouts.....]


it says:

"BLiTTER

	The BLiTTER co-processor chip in the MEGA STe computer
	greatly improves the speed of text and graphic displays."
	[etc.]

There are Atari web sites you can search if you really want to know this
stuff...
and in fact, you can find information to answer your question here:

http://www.atari-st.lovely.net/atari-st-docs/hardware/BLITTER.TXT

which says, in part,

"The Atari ST Bit-Block Transfer Processor  (BLiTTER) is  a hardware imple-
 mentation of  the bit-block  transfer (BitBlt)  algorithm.  "

etc. including a reference to Smalltalk.

Hope this helps :-).

-Andy-