[TUHS] History of top

[jason-tuhs at shalott.net]

>> I'm curious about the history of "top".  As far as I can see, the first 
>> version was written by William LeFebvre and posted to net.sources in 
>> 1984. I'm surprised it appeared that late.  Were there any other 
>> versions or similar Unix programs before that?

> My memory is failing me, but I seem to recall that here in Oz we had a 
> similar program, possibly written by Piers Lauder?  Or IanJ?
>
> It was called "ss" or something, for "system status", and I dimly recall 
> modifying it (or suggesting same) to show the hostname.

BSD's systat is similar.

The current manpage says it was released in 4.3 BSD, but the copyright 
notices in the code go back to 1980, with comments crediting "Bill Reeves 
at Lucasfilm."

https://www.retro11.de/ouxr/211bsd/usr/src/ucb/PORT/systat/pigs.c.html


  -Jason