Early UNIX dates
Warren Toomey
wkt at henry.cs.adfa.edu.au
Thu Jan 21 08:47:37 AEST 1999
All,
After some reading though papers and books, I've come up with the
following brief timeline of very early UNIX development. I just thought
some of you might find it interesting.
Warren
Early dates of UNIX Development
As accurately as we can tell, anyway! References given where possible.
1969
Unknown: Ken creates `Space Travel'. It was first written on Multics,
then transliterated into Fortran for GECOS, then Ken and
Dennis rewrote Space Travel to run on the PDP-7
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html]
Mid-year: Bell Labs withdraws from the Multics project
[QCU pg 8]
April, May, June: Ken is interested in writing a file system
[QCU pg 8]
Mid-year: Ken brings the file system to life on the PDP-7 in a month
[QCU pg 10]
Unknown: Ken develops the B language
[QCU pg 34],
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html]
1970
Unknown: Peter Neumann coins the term `Unics', which is
subsequently changed to `Unix'
[QCU pg 9]
Unknown: Alternatively, Brian Kernighan suggests the name `Unix'
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html]
Mid-year: The PDP-11/20 is purchased, with no disk drives
[QCU pg 35],
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html]
3 months later: The disks arrive
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html]
Unknown: Ken recodes the Unix kernel and some commands in PDP-11
assembly code
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html]
1971
January-March: PDP-11 version largely rewritten during this period
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html]
February: PDP-11 Unix beccomes ``operational''
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cacm.html]
Unknown: Dennis extends B to be NB
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html]
Spring: roff rewritten in PDP-11 assembler language, starting from
the PDP-7 version that had been transliterated from
McIlroy's BCPL version on Multics, which had in turn been
inspired by J. Saltzer's runoff program on CTSS
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html]
November: First Edition manuals were published
[QCU pg 43]
1972
January: The Labs issues a technical memorandum, written by Ken,
describing the B language on the PDP-11
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/kbman.html]
March: First manual for cc(1)
[QCU pg 48]
March: UNIX is running on at least 5 PDP-11/20s
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html]
June: DEC starts to ship the PDP-11/45. The Labs purchases one
sonn after this
[http://www.village.org/pdp11/faq.pages/11model.html]
June: Second Edition manuals were published. 10 UNIX installations
[QCU pg 43]
Unknown: Ken adds pipes to the assembly-language version of the kernel
[QCU pg 51],
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html]
1973
January: the `nsys' kernel in the PUPS archive, written in C
[timestamps on the files]
February: Third Edition manuals were published. 16 UNIX installations
[QCU pg 43]
Kernel is still the assembly-language version
[private email from dmr dated 7 Jan 1999]
September: The C version of the kernel is adopted over the
assembly-language version
[private email from dmr dated 18 Jan 1999]
October: First UNIX paper, presented by Ken at the Fourth
ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cacm.html]
November: Fourth Edition manuals were published
[QCU pg 43]
1974
June: Fifth Edition manuals were published
[QCU pg 43]
July: Ken's SOSP published in Communications of the ACM, 17, No. 7
[http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/cacm.html]
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