The UNIX story begins with Ken Thompson’s work on a cast-off PDP-7 minicomputer in 1969. He and the others who soon joined him had one overriding objective: to create a computing environment where they themselves could comfortably and effectively pursue their own work-programming research. The result is an operating system of unusual simplicity, generality, and, above all, intelligibility. A distinctive software style has grown upon this base. UNIX software works smoothly together; elaborate computing tasks are typically composed from loosely coupled small parts, often software tools taken off the shelf.
M. D. McILROY, E. N. PINSON , and B. A. TAGUE, “The UNIX Time-Sharing System,” Forward.
UNIX* is a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system for the larger Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 and the Interdata 8/32 computers. It offers a number of features seldom found even in larger operating systems, including
(i) A hierarchical file system incorporating demountable volumes
(ii) Compatible file, device, and inter-process I/O,
(iii) The ability to initiate asynchronous processes,
(iv) System command language selectable on a per -user basis,
(v) Over 100 subsystems including a dozen languages,
(vi) High degree of portability.D. M. RITCHIE and K. THOMPSON, “The UNIX Time-Sharing System,” The Bell System Technical Journal, V. 57, N. 6, July/August, 1978.
This paper discusses the nature and implementation of the file system
and of the user command interface.