by Bill Tuthill

from the January 1985 issue of Unix Review magazine

C is descended from B, which was descended from BCPL. BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards. B was an interpretive language written in 1970 by Ken Thompson (1) after he abandoned a Fortran implementation for the PDP-7.

BCPL and B were typeless languages, which may account for the type permissiveness of C. They restricted their scope to machine words and were rather low level. However, they provided structured programming constructs similar to those in Algol. BCPL, B, and C all provide pointers and address arithmetic. All three pass function parameters by value, rather than by address, but permit passing by address if desired.

By August Mohr

from the January 1985 issue of Unix Review magazine

This is, so to speak, a history of how UNIX evolved as a product; not the “official” history of who was responsible for what features, and what year which milestones were crossed, but the “political” history of how decision were made and what motivated the people involved. Most of the readers of this mazagine are familiar with the system itself, so I don’t want to go into great detail about how the system got to be what it is internally, but rather how it how it got to be at all.

by Gary A. Kildall

from the January 1980 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal

1973…

I was sitting quietly at my desk when Masatoshi Shima hurried into my office at Intel and asked me to follow him to his laboratory down the hall. In the middle of his work bench, among the typical snaggle of jumpers, oscilloscopes and multimeters, sat a binocular microscope with spider-leg probes, all of which were subjecting a minute piece of silicon to help­less investigation. I peered through the microscope at the en­larged regular patterns with particular interest. As a consult­ant, my job was to design and develop certain software tools for Intel. One was Interp/80, a program which simulated Intel’s newly evolved 8080 microprocessor to be used by Intel customers on timesharing systems. As I searched for some­thing recognizable, I hoped my simulation resembled the operation of Shima’s first 8080 chip which had finally come to life.

The Nearly Man

by Nigel Holder

from the January 1983 issue of Personal Computer World

Charles Babbage is remembered as the man who nearly invented the digital computer. Working in a pre-electronic age he nevertheless discovered principles which were not put into practice until Von Neumamin in the 1940’s. His mechanical computer was defeated by the lack of precise enough manufacturing techniques. Nigel Holder tells the story.

This is an account of the work of the pioneer of automatic calculating machines, Charles Babbage. His Difference Engine and Analytical Engine will be discussed. The emphasis is mainly historical, and as such there will be no detailed descriptions of how the machines work. A general over view of the calculating machines is given, as well as a description of the problems that Babbage faced.

from the December 11, 1984 issue of PC Magazine

UNIX fans have always believed their system was better than DOS. Now, with the release of the PC AT, many think UNIX will become the industry’s preferred operating system.

by Gig Graham

The software and hardware standards that have evolved from the remarkable success of the IBM PC and XT have stabilized the microcomputer industry, but at the expense of some sophistication in applications programs developed for the PC.

from the October 1994 issue of Byte magazine

by PETER H. SALUS

New Jersey, in the muggy summer of 1969, was the birthplace of Unix. It was born out of the frustration that resulted when AT&T’s BTL (Bell Telephone Labs) withdrew from the Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) project, a joint attempt by BTL, General Electric, and MIT to create an operating system for a large computer accommodating up to a thousand simultaneous users.

from the November 1982 issue of Byte magazine

by Phil Lemmons

Microcomputers are proliferating because they can do so many tasks so well. Each time microcomputers take over another task, they threaten some old technology. As word processors, for example, microcomputers threaten the typewriter. As number crunchers, microcomputers threaten the calculator. Each company whose main product is threatened faces a hard choice: perish or become a computer company. What’s more, such a company must make the right computer on the first try because the fierce competition in the microcomputer market gives few entrants a second chance. The rules permit only one roll of the dice in the game called “You bet your company.”

from the September 1984 issue of Australian Personal Computer magazine

Wayne Wilson, of Blacktown ts a little-known Australian hi-tech hero. He invented the concurrency concept that Australians now buy back from Microsoft and Digital Research. “We also had multi-user before Digital Research, and were the first to offer CP/M windowing" claims Wilson, and his partner, Roger Jones, who were also first to offer 8 and 16 bit running together. You’d think the world would beat a path to the door of AED (Acoustic Electronic Developments) unfashionably-located Blacktown Sydney factory door.

from the April 1986 issue of PCM

By Richard A. White

An important question these days is what is BASIC’s place in the world of microcomputing? Over the past few years the IBM PC and its compatibles have arrived, followed by a vast outpouring of software of every description. Each machine comes with a BASIC language interpreter on its DOS disk.

It is likely that only a small percentage of these interpreters have been loaded for the purpose of doing programming. A much larger percentage have been loaded for the purpose of running some existing BASIC program. This only reflects that early microcomputer owners were as interested in the machines themselves as they were in running applications, while more recent purchasers are buying machines to run applications only.

by Galen Gruman

from the November 1997 issue of MacWorld magazine

How quickly the dream died. In December 1994, Apple ended its Macintosh monopoly, giving Power Computing and Radius licenses to make their own Macs. With Wtndows 95 on the horizon and the success of an Intel/Microsoft duopoly clear, Apple’s leaders and the industry saw a chance for the Mac market to gain a new level of competitiveness, flexibility, and innovation.