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mikenolan7
Premium Member
join:2005-06-07
Torrance, CA

mikenolan7 to bogey7806

Premium Member

to bogey7806

Re: Telcos

Since you like the Wikipedia, from the UNIX article:

"HISTORY

In the 1960s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AT&T Bell Labs, and General Electric worked on an experimental operating system called Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service), which was designed to run on the GE-645 mainframe computer. The aim was the creation of a commercial product, although this was never a great success. Multics was an interactive operating system with many novel capabilities, including enhanced security. The project did develop production releases, but initially these releases performed poorly.

AT&T BELL LABS PULLED OUT AND DEPLOYED ITS RESOURCES ELSEWHERE. One of the developers on the Bell Labs team, Ken Thompson, continued to develop for the GE-645 mainframe, and wrote a game for that computer called Space Travel.[1] However, he found that the game was too slow on the GE machine and was expensive, costing $75 per execution in scarce computing time.[2]

Thompson thus re-wrote the game in assembly language for Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-7 with help from Dennis Ritchie. This experience, combined with his work on the Multics project, led Thompson to start a new operating system for the PDP-7. Thompson and Ritchie led a team of developers, including Rudd Canaday, at Bell Labs developing a file system as well as the new multi-tasking operating system itself. They included a command line interpreter and some small utility programs.

1970s

In the 1970s the project was named Unics, and eventually could support two simultaneous users. Brian Kernighan invented this name as a contrast to Multics; the spelling was later changed to Unix.

UP UNTIL THIS POINT THERE HAD BEEN NO FINANCIAL SUPPORT FROM BELL LABS. When the Computer Science Research Group wanted to use Unix on a much larger machine than the PDP-7, Thompson and Ritchie managed to trade the promise of adding text processing capabilities to Unix for a PDP-11/20 machine. This led to some financial support from Bell. For the first time in 1970, the Unix operating system was officially named and ran on the PDP-11/20."

Sorry, the shouting is mine, it's not meant as shouting. I don't know how to underline or any of that other cool stuff. I don't know him, but I doubt if Ken Thompson would agree with you that Bell Labs "gave" us UNIX, considering they didn't even bother paying their own employee to develop it, until they thought they could make some dinero from his efforts. Besides, don't always believe everything you read in the Wikipedia.
bogey7806
join:2004-03-19
Here

bogey7806

Member

Ok, "Gave" is a strong word but they were clearly involved in backing and funding the project at verious parts.

But as I said, show me a cable company that innovated even that much.
mikenolan7
Premium Member
join:2005-06-07
Torrance, CA

mikenolan7

Premium Member

Peace. I don't like any of them.