Monthly Archives: March 2014
Machines I Have Known
The first machine I ever programmed was a UNIVAC 1, in 1957, as an undergraduate at Harvard. Although I did not know it at the time, Sperry-Rand Corporation had given this machine to Harvard the previous year. Apparently not even … Continue reading
Posted in Rudd's Blog, Uncategorized
Tagged Bell Labs, computing history, Harvard, M.I.T., TX-2, UNIVAC
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Inventing a Database Server
A colleague of mine at Bell Labs, A. (Tax) Metaxides, was chair of the CODASYL task group on database management. He had been trying to interest people in the idea of using a specialized computer to do database management as … Continue reading
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Tagged Bell Labs, computing history, database server
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Building UNIX
UNIX was born from the ashes of the MULTICS project at Bell Labs. Although many people involved in MULTICS contributed to UNIX, it really was the creation of one brilliant software designer: Ken Thompson. As discussed in my previous blog post, Bell … Continue reading
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Tagged Bell Labs, computing history, file systems, MULTICS, UNIX, UNIX history
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How UNIX Came to Be
MULTICS suffered from second system syndrome. That’s a good thing, because the failure of MULTICS inspired us to create UNIX. As I’ve discussed in a previous post, when I assembled a team to build a time-sharing system the project was criticized … Continue reading
Posted in Rudd's Blog, Uncategorized
Tagged Bell Labs, GE computer, MULTICS, time-sharing system, UNIX, UNIX history
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