If we are going to be historical, I believe that I have had the Massachusetts UNIX plate for at least 6 months before Shannon secured NH (and have had them since). They have been displayed on eight vehicles, currently on my '18 Model S/P100. Somewhere is a picture of our cars parked next to each other, which would have been the first UNIXmobile, my silver '79 Capri, which I also had at UCB. BTW: Goble had the Indiana UNIX plate, but I'm not sure where in the sequence he was. wnj eventually had California's VMUNIX plate, but that was after both Shannon and I, and I think George. Jon Hall has the current NH UNIX plate and the NH LINUX plate.

Interesting story, Mass used to allow a single plate, with nothing or anything of your own choosing on the front. So, I used to have the official Mass plate on the back and DEC plate on the front, which looked like an NH plate. I got pulled over by a NH cop one time who was really confused. The Commonwealth of Mass made me stop doing that about 20 years ago. I'm on the 3rd set of plates (they changed colors once, the others just faded), and it's really time for me to order a new set, but that means dealing with the RMV, which is never fun.

Clem

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On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 3:35 PM Tom Lyon <pugs78@gmail.com> wrote:

Just for historical accuracy - I believe Bill Shannon first had the New Hampshire UNIX plate and Armando got it after Bill moved to Sun.
Evidence: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FYR17LRpJNpSBCGv8

On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2025 at 6:26 PM Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
Sort of like when DEC finally recognized that people were buying their hardware to run UNIX. Still remember Armando getting up and saying something to the effect that DEC hardware and UNIX had been synonymous for years and that DEC finally noticed and the held up the first DEC UNIX license (plate).

Clem Cole had--and still has--the Massachusetts UNIX license plate on his car. I don't know when he first got that plate. Armando had the New Hampshire UNIX license plate. It was on a snazzy red Datsun 280 ZX. At the time (early 1980s) I was driving a frumpy rust-bucket Datsun B210. I had the New Hampshire VAXVMS license plate. Armando jokingly threatened to park his sports car next to my car and take a picture of the two OS license plates side-by-side.

AT&T's "consider it a standard" campaign was pretty successful in getting corporate executive types thinking about UNIX. Sort of along the lines of the "Intel Inside" campaign, which actually got ordinary folks to care about whose chip was in their PC.

But AT&T never was able to take advantage of the opening the "consider it a standard" campaign provided. In addition to the reasons Clem cited, I think AT&T simply never learned how to compete in an open market. They had been a regulated utility monopoly for so very long.

-Paul W.