klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) (09/27/88)
There's an article in this week's "MIS Week" that claims that the name
"UNIX" was invented by Brian Kernighan in the mid-1960'. He, along
with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, were once part of the MIT Multics
project, but now part of the Bell Labs computer science lab. Ritchie
and Thompson were developing a simpler, more elegant operating system.
Kernighan called it "castrated Multics", thus UNIX.
Anyone want to confirm or deny this?
Ken
--
uucp: {ames!atari, ucbvax!imagen, pyramid, sgi, uunet}!daisy!klee
arpanet: daisy!klee@sgi.com or daisy!klee@uunet.uu.net
I'm not a tourist, I was born in California.steve@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Steve DeJarnett) (09/28/88)
In article <1681@daisy.UUCP> klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes: >There's an article in this week's "MIS Week" that claims that the name >"UNIX" was invented by Brian Kernighan in the mid-1960'. He, along >with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, were once part of the MIT Multics >project, but now part of the Bell Labs computer science lab. Ritchie >and Thompson were developing a simpler, more elegant operating system. >Kernighan called it "castrated Multics", thus UNIX. According to Tannenbaum in his Operating Systems book, Unix(tm) was derived from UNICS, which stood for "UNiplexed Information and Computing Service", whereas MULTICS stood for "MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service". Kernighan supposedly coined the UNICS term, which was later converted to UNIX(tm). They did work on MULTICS (at least, Thompson did), and when he found a PDP-7 lying around, he set out to make a single-user MULTICS. This evolved (eventually) into Version 6, and so on from there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Steve DeJarnett | Smart Mailers -> steve@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU | | Computer Systems Lab | Dumb Mailers -> ..!ucbvax!voder!polyslo!steve | | Cal Poly State Univ. |------------------------------------------------| | San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 | BITNET = Because Idiots Type NETwork | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
carlb@crash.cts.com (Carl Boernecke) (09/29/88)
In article <1681@daisy.UUCP> klee@daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes: >There's an article in this week's "MIS Week" that claims that the name >"UNIX" was invented by Brian Kernighan in the mid-1960'. He, along >with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, were once part of the MIT Multics >project, but now part of the Bell Labs computer science lab. Ritchie >and Thompson were developing a simpler, more elegant operating system. >Kernighan called it "castrated Multics", thus UNIX. Well, I remember reading that it was a play of words on "Multics," and just another way of saying the number one (UNI), opperating system, with an X too make it sound more like the "s" on "Multics." I do not know if this is true, or not -- this is just something that I remembered. (Kinda like the '286 compatable, that's called the "8T" (say it out loud -- now do you get it?)). -- Carl Boernecke (carlb@crash.cts.com)