5 Jun
2015
5 Jun
'15
11:16 p.m.
This new paper may be of interest to list readers:
Dan Murphy
TENEX and TOPS-20
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37(1) 75--82 (2015)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2015.15
In particular, the author notes on page 81:
> ...
> The fact that UNIX was implemented in a reasonably portable language
> (at least as compared with 36-bit MACRO) also encouraged its spread to
> new and less expensive machines. If I could have done just one thing
> differently in the history of TENEX and TOPS-20, it would be to have
> coded it in a higher-level language. With that, it's probable that the
> system, or at least large parts of it, would have spread to other
> architectures and ultimately survived the demise of the 36-bit
> architecture.
> ...
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