[Novalug] Unix Birthday: Age 40 Today

James Ewing Cottrell 3rd JECottrell3@Comcast.NET
Fri Dec 2 16:53:08 EST 2011


  The real question is "When was Unix born?"

I did some googling, and August 1969 seems to come up...others simply 
mentioned "The summer of 69", which must have been what Bryan Adams' 
song was all about :)

However, it seems like the UNIX PRM was published in 1971, as well as 
UNIX being ported to the PDP-11.

I wonder how this proto-UNIX  represented its timestamps, since the 
Epoch started in 1970.

Sort of like Jesus being born in 4BC.

JIM

On 12/1/2011 3:56 PM, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
> The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix
> The classic operating system turns 40, and its progeny abound
> By Warren Toomey  /  December 2011
>
> Source: http://tinyurl.com/7r3nouu
>
> Excerpt:
>
>        "The name Unix stems from a joke one of Thompson's colleagues made:
>        Because the new operating system supported only one user (Thompson),
>        he saw it as an emasculated version of Multics and dubbed it 'Un-multiplexed
>        Information and Computing Service,' or Unics. The name later morphed
> into Unix."
>
> The article is interesting and the play on words (Unics) is humorous:
>
> *eunuch*  (def.)
>        n : a man who has been castrated and is incapable of
>            reproduction; "eunuchs guarded the harem"
>
> --
> Roger W. Broseus - Linux User
>       Email: RogerB@bronord.com
>       Web Site: www.bronord.com
>
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