From: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Capitalization question: UNIX/Unix and MULTICS/Multics?
Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 13:13:49 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W7c0QuqF2wQTj9CoWw+=zsDLwPXXn7Arop8BwH_k+Jsmg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
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This is tangentially related to Unix, and came up randomly at work
yesterday.
In Kernighan's Unix memoir, on page 9, he touches briefly on the typography
of "Unix":
"(Multics was originally spelled MULTICS, but the lower-case version is
less visually jarring; as with UNIX versus Unix and some other all-caps
words, I’ll use the nicer-looking form even though it’s not historically
accurate.)"
Here, he is talking about interning at MIT in 1966. bwk would certainly
know better than me, but I can find no historical reference to this
"MULTICS" spelling; is anyone familiar with that? The earliest reference I
can find (the 1965 paper from the FJCC:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1463891.1463912) uses the more "Multics"
styling, but it may have been typeset later.
Alternatively, could someone send me Brian's email address?
- Dan C.
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next reply other threads:[~2022-05-11 17:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-05-11 17:13 Dan Cross [this message]
2022-05-11 18:08 ` James Frew
2022-05-11 19:57 Noel Chiappa
2022-05-11 23:47 Douglas McIlroy
2022-05-12 0:34 ` Dan Cross
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