From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tim.newsham@gmail.com (Tim Newsham) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2011 16:41:57 -1000 Subject: [TUHS] Strange Birth of Unix In-Reply-To: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org> References: <20111201214116.GA13412@minnie.tuhs.org> Message-ID: great read! short enough for the casual reader, very approachable, compelling narrative. On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Warren Toomey 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