16 Apr
2025
16 Apr
'25
5 p.m.
I see in many places the 1973 Symposium on Operating System Principles mentioned
as one of the earliest if not the earliest discussion of UNIX in the public eye.
This would be around the time of the Fourth Edition and the rewrite of the
system for the PDP-11/45 in C.
Well, I recently picked up Aho and Ullman's The Theory of Parsing, Translation,
and Compiling. The very last sentence of the preface in Volume 1 reads:
The use of UNIX, an operating system for the PDP-11
computer designed by
Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thompson, expedited the preparation of certain
parts of this manuscript.
Given that this text was published in 1972, would this have been a completely
esoteric reference to the general target audience of these books or was
knowledge of UNIX already well circulated in the computing community by then?
What other sorts of notoriety/publicity did UNIX get out in the general public
prior to its presentation in 1973 and subsequent publication of the paper in
CACM?
- Matt G.