what does "UNIX" really stand for?

Carl Boernecke carlb at crash.cts.com
Thu Sep 29 08:41:24 AEST 1988


In article <1681 at daisy.UUCP> klee at daisy.UUCP (Ken Lee) writes:
>There's an article in this week's "MIS Week" that claims that the name
>"UNIX" was invented by Brian Kernighan in the mid-1960'.  He, along
>with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, were once part of the MIT Multics
>project, but now part of the Bell Labs computer science lab.  Ritchie
>and Thompson were developing a simpler, more elegant operating system.
>Kernighan called it "castrated Multics", thus UNIX.  

Well, I remember reading that it was a play of words on "Multics,"
and just another way of saying the number one (UNI), opperating
system, with an X too make it sound more like the "s" on "Multics."

I do not know if this is true, or not -- this is just something
that I remembered.

(Kinda like the '286 compatable, that's called the "8T" (say it
out loud -- now do you get it?)).
-- 
Carl Boernecke (carlb at crash.cts.com)



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