From: tim.newsham@gmail.com (Tim Newsham)
Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 16:41:57 -1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAGSRWbgppKHr7wr_dnSK1MqLouZFJDzb3M5M4gJ=Fbopjr=zhA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org>
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great read! short enough for the casual reader, very approachable,
compelling narrative.
On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> All,
> My IEEE Spectrum article finally got published and you can read it
> on-line here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-strange-birth-and-long-life-of-unix/0
>
> I've had a few e-mails about it. This one has a few more snippets about
> early Unix history (from Rey Bonachea):
>
> It was with great pleasure and a bit of nostalgia that I read your IEEE
> article below. Thank you very much for writing it. One aspect that did
> not get mention, and that perhaps you may or may not be aware of, was
> the pseudo real time applications of Unix.
>
> In 1972 I joined Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ working on a project by the name
> of Switching Control Center System. At the beginning I was just a brand
> new member of the technical staff working on circuit design for
> interfaces to the PDP11/20. This project was meant to centralize the data
> streams from the maintenance channel of switching machine. Then, in a
> multi-user environment , would analyze the incoming data streams and raise
> alarms as appropriate. It also provided a whole suite of analysis tools to
> allow switch maintenance personnel to trouble shoot the electronic
> switches.
>
> Because the switches could not buffer messages or be slowed by flow
> control, the Unix system had to catch messages in real time and put it
> away on disk for later analysis. Due to the near real time requirements, a
> number of features were added to Unix such as semaphores. The Unix based
> Switching Control Center System (SCCS) software was trialed in New
> Brunswick NJ in 1973 and later that year was released as the first
> commercial application of the Unix OS.
>
> I learned to program on that PDP 11/20 computer running Unix and
> eventually wrote many applications for the SCCS, initially in assembly
> language and then in C as we were also the first project to use C
> commercially.
>
> Cheers,
> Warren
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
--
Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-12-02 2:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-12-01 21:41 Warren Toomey
2011-12-02 2:18 ` Michael Kerpan
2011-12-02 2:41 ` Tim Newsham [this message]
[not found] ` <Pine.BSI.4.64.1112110216430.28648@dave.horsfall.org>
2011-12-10 16:07 ` John Cowan
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