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In the beginning: botched acronyms
The origins to UNIX can be traced back, somewhat fuzzily, to the early spring of 1969 during an informal discussion of just what the researchers wanted a computer operating system to do.
Thompson, once it was obvious that Multics was going away, decided to satisfy two urges: to write an operating system of his own, and to create an environment in which to do future work. "Dennis, (Rudd) Canaday and myself were just discussing these ideas of the general nature, of keeping the files out of each other's hair, and the nitty-gritty of expanding, of the real implementation: where you put the block address ...", Thompson explained.2
At the end of the discussion, Canaday picked up the phone, dialed into a Bell Labs dictation service, and read in his notes. "The next day these notes came back," Thompson said, "and all the acronyms were butchered, like 'inode' and 'eyen.'"
Butchered or not, the notes became the basis for UNIX. Each researcher received a copy of the notes, "...and they became the working document for the file system," Thompson said.
Next: The famous PDP-7 comes to the rescue
![[ UNIX building blocks ]](images/86-300838-EM.jpeg)