alan@apollo.uucp (Alan Lehotsky) (10/03/86)
In discussing the age of SUID in UNIX, Barry Shein claims that UNIX predates TOPS-10,
but that he wasn't sure about its predecessor TENEX. In the interest of architectural
history, I want to set the record straight.
TOPS-10 was one of the first "time-sharing" systems - and dates back to approximately
1966! So, it significantly precedes any version of UNIX (even the PDP-7 proto-UNIX)! I
don't have a date for when .JACCT was invented - and my "TOPS-10 Phonebook" is at home, not
at work - but I think that it was in place by 1969. TENEX was an operating system built
originally by BBN [could be wrong about this] and then adopted by DEC as TOPS-20 and released
in the mid-70's.
The amusing thing about the age of TOPS-10 is that when the file system was originally
designed, they only had about 12 bits to store dates (file-creation, modification, etc.) But
that was okay, because it was stored relative to 1966, which gave them 9 years - and they were
sure that the machine would be obsolete LONG before that! When 1975 roled around you can imagine
the chagrin (and broken programs) when the dates rolled around! (Luckily, they managed to find
another 6 bits)