NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/comp/unix/question/13024

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From: [e-mail] (Magnus Olsson)
Subject: Re: Whence Unix? (was Re: IS UNIX DEAD?)
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Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 09:29:37 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tim Pierce) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Vermillion) writes:
>
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Busser) writes:
>>
>>>UNIX was designed by hackers for hackers (or by programmers for programmers,
>>>whichever you like best). But it is flexible, programmable, etc. so it could be
>>>made to a real end-user system. And why not?
>>
>>I thought Unix was written by Bell as a word-processing system
>>to enable them write their the phone company manuals.
>
>I heard that, but I also heard that Thompson's *primary* goal was to
>find a machine for playing Space War.  What's the story?

I quote from Ritchie and Thompson themselves, in "The Unix
Time-Sharing system", published in "The Unix Time-Sharing System",
thematic issue of Bell System Tech. J. vol 57, no 6 part 2 (1978):

"There have been four versions of the UNIX time-sharing system. The
earliest (ca 1969-70) ran on the Digital Equipment Corporation DPD-7
and -9 computers. The second version ran on the unprotected PDP-11/20
computer. The third incorporated multiprogramming and ran on the
PDP-11/34, /40, /45, /60 and /70 computers

[...]

Since PDP-11 UNIX became operational in February, 1971, over 600
installations have been put into service. Most of them are engaged in
applications such as computer science education, the preparation and
formatting of documents and other textual material, the collection and
processing of trouble data from various switching machines within the
Bell System, and recording and checking telephone service orders. Our
own installation is used mainly for research in operating systems,
languages, computer networks, and other topics in computer science,
and also for document preparation.

[...]

The first version was written when one of us (Thompson), dissatisfied
with the available computer facilities, discovered a little-used PDP-7
and set out to create a more hospitable environment. This (essentially
personal) effort was sufficiently successful to gain the interests of
the other author and several colleagues, and later to justify the
acquisition of the PDP-11/20, specifically to support a text editing
and formatting system.

[...]

...because we are programmers, we naturally designed the sustem to
make it easy to write, test and run programs."


While it doesn't mention Space war (which I suppose isn't serious
enough for a research journal), this makes very clear that *both*
stories are correct: Unix was initially developed by programmers, for
programmers, but word processing became an important application very
early.

Thompson and Ritchie seemed pretty proud about the 600 installed
systems in 1978; I wonder what they'd have said if somebody had told
them back then that there'd be millions of Unix systems within 15
years...


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