UNIX History

[Patrick A. Fargo]

After reading the various responses to the history of UNIX within and outside
AT&T Bell Laboratories, I decided to provide some other details of the
development inside the labs.  I ordered the 2nd PDP 11/70 at Indian Hill
in 1976. I will try to give a list of important changes in perspective.

After development of the first UNIX systems in research, Joe Maranzano
of Murray Hill created a UNIX support group. This group would package,
fix bugs, and enhance the research version periodically. A year after
this new group was formed, Heiz Lacklama and Doug Bayer of Holmdel
modified UNIX for a PDP 11/70 using the 3 memory management registers so
that UNIX ran as a supervisor. This product, called MERT for Mult
Environment Real-Time operating system, was eventually support by the same
UNIX support group.

The third major entry was UNIX/PWD. The programmers workbench contained
programs which controlled remote job entry, and source control. These were
developed at Piscataway N. J. In this time period, new PDP processors such
as the PDP 11/34, and PDP 11/23 and even a PDP 11/55 were released and off-
springs to UNIX developed for them. The PCC (Portable C Compiler) and satellite
library for UNIX was generated and new MINI UNIX products arose. On the
other hand, UNIX for a HONEYWELL and UNIVAC 1100 series was also started.

Around 1978, the UNIX support group in conjunction with a computer task force
decided to support two major releases. UNIX/TS and UNIX/RT. UNIX/TS was USG
UNIX and PWD UNIX combined. The UNIX/RT was basically supported MERT. Columbus
had modifyed a version of MERT extensively, and called their product
CB UNIX. Another version of MERT formed the basis for DMERT, a Duplex operating
system. The thrust of only two supported versions was that UNIX/RT showed
very good promise as being the more used version and anything that could
be done in UNIX/TS would work in UNIX/RT.

The advent of the PDP VAX computer now created four products. UNIX/RT and
UNIX/TS for both PDP 111/70 and VAX 780 computers. In 1979 UNIX/RT was
announced as 1 year to freeze, with UNIX/RT VAX officially dead. The
remaining UNIX/TS VAX was again modified by the Indian Hill computer center
into another product called UNIX/TS Augmented. Finally, the product
internal to AT&T Bell Labs call UNIX/TS was the only major product supported.

I hope this little history was interesting. If you have further questions
I will try and answer them within company constraints.

Patrick A. Fargo