The History of Unix

Those of you who didn't grow up in the mainframe era of computing may not be aware that Linux, currently the dominant server operating system, is actually a spin off from a much older operating system, Unix. What I didn't know, until I read this article, was that Unix was the offspring of an older and failed operating system called Multics.

Cancellation of Multics meant the end of the only project that the programmers in the Computer science department had to work on—and it also meant the loss of the only computer in the Computer science department. After the GE 645 mainframe was taken apart and hauled off, the computer science department’s resources were reduced to little more than office supplies and a few terminals.

As Ken Thompson, another programmer working on the project, wryly observed for the Unix Oral History project, “Our personal way of life was going to go much more spartan.”

Luckily for computer enthusiasts, constraint can at times lead to immense creativity. And so the most influential operating system ever written was not funded by venture capitalists, and the people who wrote it didn’t become billionaires because of it. Unix came about because Bell Labs hired smart people and gave them the freedom to amuse themselves, trusting that their projects would be useful more often than not. Before Unix, researchers at Bell Labs had already invented the transistor and the laser, as well as any number of innovations in computer graphics, speech synthesis, and speech recognition.

It's hard to imagine what modern computing would be like if Unix hadn't been developed. (Actually, I can imagine it quite well: I worked at IBM for a couple of years.) Sadly, we no longer have Bell Labs; the world might be a better place if we did.