13.1. Unix History

Developed in 1969 at Bell Labs, Unix is by far the oldest distributed NOS (network operating system) in use today. Its creation is credited to Ken Thompson, who was working at that time for Bell Labs on the Multiplex Information Computing System (MULTICS) for a General Electric mainframe. Bell Labs eventually dropped the project, and with it went an important piece of software: a game called Space Travel.

It is rumored that Thompson set out to create a new operating system to which the game could be ported. MULTICS assembly code was rewritten for an available DEC PDP-7, and the new operating system was named UNICS.

Bell Labs eventually took interest in UNICS, as additional functionality beyond the game Space Travel was added, ...

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