Meet The Creators Of World's Most Successful Operating System

Remember that old operating system- the one tagged to be as the multi-tasking, multi-user operating system? Yes, we are talking about the OS called the Unix. Developed in 1969 at Bell Labs by AT&T employees and associates, Unix was once to be known as true, free-form OS for computer developers. As years passed, Unix got a number of descendants and clones including Berkeley Unix, Minix, Linux, AIX, A/UX, HP-UX, and Solaris. Even Apple’s Mac OS X is based on Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).

But today, the once unrivaled operating system has found itself in a slow, inexorable decline. According to IDC, Unix server revenue may slide from $10.2 billion in 2012 to $8.7 billion by 2017, whereas Gartner has foreseen Unix market share slipping from 16 percent in 2012 to 9 percent in 2017. Enterprises already have started to move away from the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) platform to x86 processor based alternatives. This means, one day Unix will end its 30 year old run, and it is not too far.

With that said, it time we take a look at the long old history - Yes, the early pioneers and their contributions in developing the operating system called Unix, as reported on InfoWorld.

Ken Thompson:

Ken Thompson is mainly regarded as the co-developer of Unix. During his stint at Bell Labs from 1966 to 2000, Thompson wrote the B programming language, which was actually known to be the precursor to the C language. Later on, he wrote Unix in C and then again developed parts of it to include them in Doug Mcllroy’s pipes. Today, he currently works as a Distinguished Engineer at Google.

Dennis Ritchie (Sept 9, 1941 – Oct 12, 2011)

Well known as the creator of the C programming language, Dennis Ritchie was also the co-developer of the Unix operating system. Ritchie also worked at Bell Labs, which later on merged with AT&T and then later on branched into Lucent Technologies. Some of his important books in programming include "Unix Programmer's Manual" (1971) and "The C Programming Language" (1978) with Brian Kernighan.

Joe Ossanna (Dec 10, 1928 – Nov 28, 1977)

Joe Ossanna’s stint at Bell Labs started from mid 50’s until he died in 1977. Ossanna was one of the lead developers in Multics, the first timesharing operating system at Bell Labs and MIT. Later on Ossanna, along with Thompson, Ritchie and Rudd Canaday, developed Unics, which today is well-known as Unix.  Ossanna also worked in writing a version of nroff (also called as Troff) that managed team’s new Graphic systems CAT phototypesetter. In 1973, he wrote the first Unix troff in PDP-11 assembly language, then two years later he rewrote the code in C.

Douglas Mcllroy:

Douglas Mcllroy is known for developing Unix pipes or pipelines, apart from developing a number of Unix tools. Mcllroy’s stint at Bell Labs started from 1958 till he retired in 1997. He also stood as the lead force behind both component based and product line software engineering.  Apart from receiving numerous awards from the computer industry, Mcllroy also had written and edited numerous books and journals. Today he works as an adjunct professor of computer science at Dartmouth College.

Peter Neumann:

Another prodigy from Bell Labs, Peter Neumann worked from 1960 to 1970. During his stint, he had worked on the Multics team.  Neumann was one of the main leads behind file system design and in developing input-output design along with Thompsn, Ossanna and Stan Dunten. Apart from publishing numerous articles and papers, Neumann also is the moderator of RISKS Digest and the founding editor of ACM Software Engineering Notes. Today, Neumann works as the Principal Scientist at SRI.

Rudd Canaday:

Also worked at Bell Labs from 1964 to 1989, Rudd Canaday is mainly credited as the third co-developer of Unix. Most of his accomplishments are the first ever, that is the first database server, the first company-wide application of Unix, the first internal Unix application (at AT&T), the first automated testing system, the first automated white pages/directory assistance program, and the first (or one of the first) three-dimensional file systems. He is also the co-founder and director of engineering at RHC Software.

Brian Kernighan:

Brian Kernighan also worked at Bell Labs along with Thompson, Ritchie and others and also was on the team that developed Unix. He is one of the co-authors of the first book on C programming language, along-side Dennis Ritchie and also known for innovating the term WYSIWYG. Today, Kernighan works as a professor in the computer science department at Princeton University.

Michael Lesk:

Michael Lesk worked at Bell Labs from 1970 to 1984. During Lesk’s stint at Bell Labs, he had a chance to work with the Unix development team. Some of Lesk’s primary contributions include tools for word processing and tools for compiling and networking. Lesk also wrote the Portable I/O Library and was part of the team that developed the C Language preprocessor. Later on, he left Bell Labs for research group Bellcore. From 1998 to 2002, Lesk was the head of the information and intelligent systems division at the National Science Foundation. Today, this genius works as a professor of library and information science at Rutgers University.

Bill Joy:

Bill Joy is famously known as the co-designer of the Berkeley Unix operating system (BSD or Berkeley Software Distribution Unix), which is an open-source operating system with built-in TCP/IP networking. The BSD Unix included the C shell, the vi editor, and virtual memory support that allowed programs to function beyond the hardware’s actual physical capability. In 1982, Joy co-founded Sun and in 1986, he was awarded the Grace Murray Hopper Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He currently partners with venture capital firms Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers.

David Korn:

Unix users might be familiar with the term ‘Korn Shell’- well here’s the guy who developed the Korn Shell- David Korn. Korn started his career at Bell Labs in 1976. The main aim behind developing the Konr shell was to invent a more flexible core than C and Bourne shells. Apart from developing the Korn Shell, he also developed UWIN, an X/Open library for Win32 systems. He has written two books and dozens of papers on Unix and its development. Korn still works at AT&T Labs.

Rob Pike:

Another member of the Unix team, Rob Pike worked at Bell Labs from 1980 to 2002. Apart from his well- known contributions to Plan 9, the inferno operating systems and the Limbo programming language, Pike was the first to write a bitmap window system for Unix in 1981. He also co-developed Blit graphical terminal for Unix. Pike co-authored books called "The Practice of Programming and “The Unix Programming Environment" with Brian Kernighan. Today, Pike works as a Distinguished Engineer at Google.

Andrew Tanebaum:

Andrew Tanenbaum worked at Bell Labs from 1979 to 1982. In 1987, Tanenbaum wrote a Unix clone called Minix or the Mini-Unix, which later on became a worldwide phenomenon.  For the development of Minix, Tanenbaum has earned over two dozen awards, fellows and honorary doctorates and also authored half a dozen publications. At present, Tanenbaum works as a professor of computer science at Vrije Universiteit at Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Rick Rashid:

Rick Rashid’s contribution to the Unix world was the first version of the Mach kernel, a replacement for BSD Unix. Mach was the first 64-bit version of Unix and, together with BSD, became the foundation for the Open Software Foundation's OS called OSF/1. This later on became the base for DEC/Compaq/HP, NeXT step and the Apple Mac OS X. Currently, Rashid works as the chief research officer at Microsoft.

Gordon Bell:

Even though Gordon Bell was not employed at Bell Labs, he did work with Thompson and Ritchie. Bell worked in R&D at Digital Equipment Corp for 23 years. His greatest achievement in the Unix world was the invention of a VAX minicomputer. Today, Bell is considered as the lone driving factor behind the adoption of Unix across various verticals such as supercomputers, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). At present, Bell works at Microsoft.

Linus Torvalds:

In August 1991, when Linus Torvalds announced the first ever Linux operating system, the world welcomed it with a standing ovation. Such was its computing power, that it took the whole technology space to greater heights. Torvalds originally created a Linux kernel to work on an 80386 processor PC, which was running on the Minix operating system and a GNU, C compiler. However, the fact that ‘a kernel never can make a OS’ gave Torvalds secondary thoughts. What happened next was that, the GNU project gathered and developed all the necessary tools including the shell, compilers, and library tools and released them under its General Public License in 1992. Torvalds integrated all the components with his kernel and the Linux was officially born. In 1996, Torvalds added a Penguin as the mascot, and the rest is just history.