114 S 0 9|CO UTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 379
and, within amonth, had the first fully working
versionof Unics up and running.
There’s some disputeover the origin of its
name,but in 2003,LinuxJournalinterviewed
Brian Kernighan,who contributed to Unics
during his time at Bell Labs.
“Multicswas... big and complicated
becauseit had many of everything,”hesaid.
“I suggested Unics...becauseit was small
and had at most one of anything.(Multi and
uni are both Latin roots, so it was avery weak
pun.) Someoneelse spelled it with the letter X;
no-onecan rememberwho.”UNIXIS BORN
Whoever came up with the name,and
doesn’t really matter.What does is the
that Unix was asuccess.Not awidespr d
success–yet –but enoughof atriumph
convinceBell Labs that the projecthad
future.And, when it had aspecific use d
processing–the companywas finally p d
to put some real moneybehind the pro
at last invested in aDEC PDP-11. The mach e
was ready by the end of 1970, and the
followingyear,the Bell Labs Patent Offi
posted atrio of typists to test the new
text-formattingsystem –roff –for them l.
Ritchie recalls how they“spent the d y
busily typing, editing and formattingpa
applications...on amachine with no m
protection and asingle 0.5MB disk”.
Despitethe primitivehardware,the
trial was asuccess,Unix had landed
its first customer and work on its
text-handlingfeatures continued.“Joe Ossannabecamethe driving force
behind Unix text-formattingsoftware.His
macro-based,trap-drivennroffappearedin
v2,”writes DouglasMcIlroy, one of Unix’s
originaldevelopers,inAResearchUnixReader.
“When GraphicsSystems announcedan
inexpensivetypesetter with ASCII paper tape
input, Ossannasprang forone,replacedthe
tape reader with awire to the computer,and
modifiednrofffor multiplefonts and
proportionalspacing.Voila, troff. It blew
the manufacturer’s mind, and touched off
aflurry of homemadedocumentsin
flamboyant layouts –good enough,however,
to fool referees intosuspectingthat the
m h d b bl h dbUNIX’S FIRSTCUSTOMER
At this stage,Unix was still an in-house
project,but not formuch longer.In1973, two
significantevents took place.The first was a
completerewritingof Unix in C, rather than
the assemblylanguagethat had been used to
date, which made it compatiblewith abroader
range of hardware.The secondwas its public
unveilingat the Symposiumon Operating
Systems PrinciplesIt was an immediate
g g g ficantinterest and
q
B fo rthe price of the
g t was forbiddenfrom
g y g ther than atelecoms
d h g g nix itself would have
h business.By 1977,
h usinesshad changed,
a d t e st co e calversioncould be
y st ems Corporation
/ based on Unix’s sixth
j d, three years later,
c osoft o owedsuit with Xenix.
ts successs ould have hinted at
mpanywould later
ac e e th Windows.
W ng in the June 1981
d n ofBytemagazine,
X x productmanager
bert BGreenberg
xplainedthat Unix’sSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPSEPTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMTEMBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBERBER 20202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202019191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919191919 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||COMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUTPUT
why ,
the fact
pread
mph to
had a
–word
prepared
oject: it
machineOffice
wUnix
mselves.
day
atent
memoryto fool referees intosuspectingthat the
manuscriptshad been publishedbefore.”Systems Principles.It was
success,garneringsignifi
requeststo license it.
Bell initiallydid this fo
media and shipping,as i
operatingas anythingot
provider.ChargingforU
put it in the software busi
however,its terms of bu
and the first commercial
released.InteractiveSyst
marketed and sold IS/1,
major revision and
Microsoftfollowed
Its successsho
what the com
achieve with
Writin
edition
Xenix
Rob
expABOVE:The DEC PDP-7.Itwas on one of these
machinesthat the first incarnationof Unix was
originallydevelopedRIGHT:Brian
Kernighanis
credited with
comingup with
the name Unics,
as apun on
Multics,although
who swapped
the ‘cs’ for‘x’ is
unknown