From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 09:02:07 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] A Talk on Early Unix In-Reply-To: <201606301241.u5UCfgXc014753@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> References: <201606301241.u5UCfgXc014753@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 8:41 AM, Doug McIlroy wrote: > [snip] > > Though Unix itself didn't get into switches, Unix people did > have a significant influence on the OS architecture for > ESS 5. Bob Morris, having observed some of the tribulations of > that project, suggested that CS Research build a demonstration > switch. Lee McMahon, Ken Thompson, and Joe Condon spearheaded > the effort and enlisted Gerard Holzmann's help in verification > (ironically, the only application of Gerhard's methods to > software made in his own department). They called the system, > which was very different from Unix, TPC--The Phone Company. It > actually controlled many of our phones for some years. The > cleanliness of McMahon's architecture, which ran on a PDP-11, > caught the attention of Indian Hill and spurred a major > reworking of the ESS design. > I'm curious if the name "TPC" was an allusion to the apocryphal telephone company of the same name in the 1967 movie, "The President's Analyst"? - Dan C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: