5 Jul
2016
5 Jul
'16
11:32 a.m.
The following book provides an interesting perspective on many of the
questions you ask.
Narain Gehani. Bell Labs: Life in the Crown Jewel. Silicon Press,
Summit, NJ, 2003.
Many of the Bell Labs technical reports related to Unix were also
published in volume 2 of the Unix Programmer's Manual. Some also
appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal. Back issues of the
latter used to be freely available online, but they now live behind the
IEEE Xplore Digital Library pay-wall. Two issues of BSTJ devoted to
Unix (volume 57 number 6 July-August 1978 and volume 63, number 8,
October 1984) were also published in book form (titled "Unix System
Readings and Applications") by Prentice-Hall in 1987.
On 05/07/2016 03:17, Wendell P wrote:
Since a few people here are Bell Labs veterans,
I'd to ask if someone
can explain a bit about that place. Sometimes I hear about work done
there that I'd like to follow up on, but I have no idea where to start.
For starters, I assume that everybody had to write up periodical reports
on their work. Was that stuff archived and is it still accessible
someplace? What about software that got to the point that it actually
had users beyond the developers? I know that major commercial projects
like UNIX are tied up in licensing limbo, but does that apply to
absolutely everything made there?
There is the AT&T Archives and History Center in Warren, NJ. Is it worth
asking if they have old tech reports?