Kenthompson1

Ken Thompson

By natbran

  • Born

    Born
    Ken Thompson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana

  • Bachelors Degree

    Bachelors Degree
    Thompson receives his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley

  • Masters Degree

    Masters Degree
    Thompson receives his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and University of California, Berkeley

  • Hired by Bell Labs

    Hired by Bell Labs
    After graduation, Thompson was hired by Bell Labs

  • Bell Labs Parts Ways with MULTICS

    Bell Labs Parts Ways with MULTICS
    when Bell Labs pulled out of the MULTICS project, Thompson began to write his own operating system, mostly because he wanted a system that could run his game on the PDP-7

  • Thompson writes kernal/shell/assembler

    Thompson writes kernal/shell/assembler
    In just a little over a month Thompson wrote , the “shell” which is used to read and follow through commands that are typed into the computer, an editor and an “assembler” which is a program to convert source/machine code than can be directly understood by a computer’s central processing unit.

  • Space Travel

    Space Travel
    Thompson creates the game Space Travel, which allowed pilots to fly a vehicle around a stimulation of the solar system, be able to view the surroundings, and even land on different planets and their moons.

  • B Programing Language

    B Programing Language
    Thompson writes the B programming language, which started out as an effort to improve the existing BCPL (basic combined programming language) language

  • UNIX named

    UNIX named
    team member Brian Kernighan coined the name a “Unics” which later was shortened to UNIX

  • Trade Made with Bell Labs

    Trade Made with Bell Labs
    Thompson and Ritchie (colleague) had goals to use Unix on a much larger machine than the PDP-7. They traded with Bell Labs, the promise of adding text-processing capabilities to Unix for financial support.

  • UNIX

    UNIX
    Unix, the operating system was released by Thompson and his colleagues

  • Thompson Presents UNIX

    Thompson Presents UNIX
    For the first time, Thompson presented UNIX to his alma mater UCB

  • Return to UCB

    Return to UCB
    Thompson returns to the university as a visiting professor while he also assisted in further developing the system.

  • UNIX Makes an Impression

    UNIX Makes an Impression
    market for Unix systems had expanded enough that industry analysts and researches were now noticing it.

  • Retirement

    Retirement
    Ken Thompson retires from Bell Labs