cshym74
UNIX*: Live Free or Die
UNIX and the C Programming Language
“MIT’s early timesharing projects led to the invention of the MULTICS operating system, which ran on General Electric (later Honeywell) mainframe computers. Bell Laboratories contributed to its development until they dropped out of the project in 1969.
Two Bell programmers, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, independently made a smaller version of MULTICS that ran on a single minicomputer. They called their system UNIX, to represent “one of whatever MULTICS was many of,” and freely distributed it to anyone who asked. An operating system that was not supported by a major computer manufacturer and that was free for the asking was a radical concept in the early 1070s, but was soon adopted by universities and research groups around the world.
The cryptic commands used to control UNIX, such as “is,” “pwd,” “cd,” and “man,” gave it both power and mystery. While these efficient commands still exist in modern variants of the system, the advent of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) made UNIX more accessible. Today, there is a version of UNIX available for almost every commercially available computer, and a strong group of supporters make free versions of UNIX available via the Internet. Programmers developed the C language to simplify the development of UNIX. The C language has since become one of the most widely used languages, particularly for systems programming.”
Computer History Museum
Mountain View, CA
(7123)
UNIX*: Live Free or Die
UNIX and the C Programming Language
“MIT’s early timesharing projects led to the invention of the MULTICS operating system, which ran on General Electric (later Honeywell) mainframe computers. Bell Laboratories contributed to its development until they dropped out of the project in 1969.
Two Bell programmers, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, independently made a smaller version of MULTICS that ran on a single minicomputer. They called their system UNIX, to represent “one of whatever MULTICS was many of,” and freely distributed it to anyone who asked. An operating system that was not supported by a major computer manufacturer and that was free for the asking was a radical concept in the early 1070s, but was soon adopted by universities and research groups around the world.
The cryptic commands used to control UNIX, such as “is,” “pwd,” “cd,” and “man,” gave it both power and mystery. While these efficient commands still exist in modern variants of the system, the advent of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) made UNIX more accessible. Today, there is a version of UNIX available for almost every commercially available computer, and a strong group of supporters make free versions of UNIX available via the Internet. Programmers developed the C language to simplify the development of UNIX. The C language has since become one of the most widely used languages, particularly for systems programming.”
Computer History Museum
Mountain View, CA
(7123)