[TUHS] Unix and the PDP-10
Nelson H. F. Beebe
beebe at math.utah.edu
Sat Jun 6 03:16:59 AEST 2015
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.
>> ...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Nelson H. F. Beebe Tel: +1 801 581 5254 -
- University of Utah FAX: +1 801 581 4148 -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233 beebe at acm.org beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the TUHS
mailing list