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Ken Thompson at Bell Labs writes the first version of an as-yet-unnamed operating system, in assembly language for a DEC PDP-7 minicomputer.
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Thompson's operating system is named Unics, for Uniplexed Information and Computing Service and a pun on "emasculated Multics." (The name is later mysteriously changed to Unix.)
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The first edition of the "Unix Programmer's Manual," written by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, is published.
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Unix matures. The "pipe," a mechanism for sharing information between two programs, which will influence operating systems for decades, is added to Unix. Unix is rewritten from assembler into C.
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"The UNIX Timesharing System," by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, appears in the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
The authors call it "a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system." The article produces the first big demand for Unix.https://www.networkworld.com/article/2256481/software/timeline--40-years-of-unix.html -
Bell Labs programmer Mike Lesk develops UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Program) for network transfer of files, e-mail and Usenet content.
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Bill Joy, a graduate student at Berkeley, sends out copies of the first Berkeley Software Distribution (1BSD), essentially Bell Labs' Unix V6 with some add-ons. BSD becomes a rival Unix branch to AT&T's Unix
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Bill Joy co-founds Sun Microsystems to produce the Unix-based Sun workstation.
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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.
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Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie receive the ACM's Turing Award
"for their development of generic operating systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system."https://www.networkworld.com/article/2256481/software/timeline--40-years-of-unix.html -
AT&T Bell Labs and Sun Microsystems announce plans to co-develop a system that would unify the two major Unix branches.
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Unix Wars to develop UNIX International
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.https://www.networkworld.com/article/2256481/software/timeline--40-years-of-unix.html -
Sun Microsystems announces Solaris, an operating system based on SVR4.
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AT&T sells its subsidiary Unix System Laboratories and all Unix rights to Novell. Later that year Novell transfers the Unix trademark to the X/Open group.
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The Open Group announces Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification (formerly Spec 1170).
