Unix is an operating system designed at AT&Tfor their own personal use. The following electronic mail message from Dennis Ritchie may help explain who was responsible for Unix.
From: dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie)
Subject: re: UNIX
Message-ID: <11613@alice.att.com>
Date: 14 Nov 90 05:53:03 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
I read,
> Looks like folks are now beginning to credit the development
> of UNIX to Kernighan and Ritchie, but I thought the principal
> investigators were *Thompson* and Ritchie. Did something change?
The differences between Kernighan Ritchie Thompson are real
but very subtle. We all look alike (middle aged with scruffy
graying beards). Note these distinctions:
-- Kernighan is slimmest, Ritchie middlest, Thompson heaviest
in body build
-- Ritchie got contacts a couple of years ago and so is the
only current non-glasses wearer
-- Thompson wouldn't touch netnews with a pole, Kernighan
secretly gets misc.invest and misc.taxes mailed to him,
Ritchie reads it more than is good for him and occasionally
contributes
-- Ritchie is the only one who has met five people who have
appeared on David Letterman (Penn, Teller, Rob Pike, Mayor Koch, and
the guy who raised the biggest hog in Ohio)
-- Kernighan has written ten times as much readable prose as has
Ritchie, Ritchie ten times as much as Thompson. It's tempting
to say that the reverse proportions hold for code, but
in fact Kernighan and Ritchie are more nearly tied
and Thompson wipes us both out.
Dennis
Through a wild[+] series of events, Unix has become a standard
operating system for many. Why else would you be reading this?