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Born
Ken Thompson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana -
Bachelors Degree
Thompson receives his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley -
Masters Degree
Thompson receives his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and University of California, Berkeley -
Hired by Bell Labs
After graduation, Thompson was hired by Bell Labs -
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
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
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
Thompson writes the B programming language, which started out as an effort to improve the existing BCPL (basic combined programming language) language -
UNIX named
team member Brian Kernighan coined the name a “Unics” which later was shortened to UNIX -
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, the operating system was released by Thompson and his colleagues -
Thompson Presents UNIX
For the first time, Thompson presented UNIX to his alma mater 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
market for Unix systems had expanded enough that industry analysts and researches were now noticing it. -
Retirement
Ken Thompson retires from Bell Labs
