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AT&T withdraws
During March 1969 the Bell laboratories stop the development of Multics (multiplexed Information and Computing Service). Some of developments from Multics will be seen later on in Unix. -
Unnamed OS
Ken Thompson while working at Bell Labs writes the first version of an as-yet-unnamed operating system. He used assembly language for a DEC PDP-7 minicomputer. -
Unics
ken Thompson's operating gets the name of Unics for Uniplexed Information and Computing Service. The name would eventually get changed to Unix. -
The Manual
1st edition of the "Unix Programmer's Manual," written by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie -
PDP-11 minicomputer
Unix moves to the new Digital Equipment Coprs. PDP11 minicomputer -
C Language
Dennis Ritchie develops the C programming language -
Growing up
The "Pipe" mechanism in Unix for sharing information between two programs, which will influence OS for decades is added to Unix. Unix is rewritten for assembler into C -
University of California
University of California at Berkeley receives a copy of Unix. -
Association for Computing Machinery
Unix appears in a monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The authors call it "a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system." The article generates demand for Unix. -
Sharing
Bell Labs programmer Mike Lesk develops UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Program) for netwrk transfer of files, e-mail and Usenet content. -
Porting
Unix is ported to non-DEC hardware: Interdata 8/32 and IBM 360. -
Bill Joy
Bill Joy, a graduate student at Berkeley, sends out copies of the first Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD). BSD becomes a rival Unix branch at AT&T's Unix. Its variants and eventual descendaents include FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DEC Ultrix, SunOS, NeXTstep/OpenStep and Mac OS X. -
TCP/IP
4BSD with DARPA sponsorship, becomes the first version of Unix to incorporate TCP/IP -
Sun Workstation
Bill Joy co-founds Sun Microsystems to produce the Unix-based Sun Workstation -
Unix System V
AT&T releases the first version of the influential Unix System V, which will become the basis for IBM's AIX and Hewlett Packard's HP-UX. -
Support Policy
AT&T describes its support policy for Unix: "No advertising, no support, no bug fixes, payment in advance."
X/Open Co., A European consortium of computer makers, is formed to standardize Unix in the X/Open portability guide. -
SVID
AT&T publishes the System V Interface Definition (SVID), an attempt to set a standard for how Unix works. -
MACH
Rich Rashid and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University create the first version of Mach, a replacement kernel for BSD Unix intended to create an operating system with good portability, strong security and use multiprocessor application -
Unification
AT&T Bell Labs and Sun Microsystems announce plans to co-develop a system that would unify the two major Unix branches. Andrew Tanenbaum writes Minix, an open-source Unix clone for use in computer science classrooms. -
Unix War
The "Unix Wars" are underway. In response to the AT&T/Sun partnership, rival Unix vendors including DEC, HP and IBM form the Open Software Foundation (OSF) to develop open Unix standards. AT&T and its partners then form their own standards group, Unix international. -
Linux
Sun Microsystems announces Solaris, an operating system based on SVR4. Linux Torvalds writes Linux, an open-source OS kernel inspired by Minix. -
Combining
The Linux kernel is combined with GNU to create the free GNU/Linux operating system, which many refer to as simply "Linux" -
NASA
NASA invents Beowulf computing based on inexpensive clusters of commodity PC's running Unix or Linux on a TCP/IP LAN. -
Merge
X/Open mergers with Open Software Foundation to form The Open Group. -
national Medal of Technology
U.S President Clinton presents the national Medal of Technology to Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for their work at Bell Labs.