Peek and Poke originated from system calls in TOPS-10.
These were put into tops-10 in a late series 4 or early
series 5 release. It is possible that their use in a PDP-8
basic predates their use in the Pdp-10 monitor. I am not sure.
TRON and TROFF were original with our basic as far as I know,
but PEEK and POKE came form one of these sources.
(it is true that I was at Harvard and used ECL a lot but that
was not where I saw them.)
Bill Gates
Microsoft