Bell Labs Plans Big 50th Anniversary Event For Unix

'Photographer Peter Adams launched a "Faces of Open Source" portrait
project in 2014. This week he posted a special announcement on the web
site of Bell Labs:

Later this month, Bell Labs will celebrate the 50th anniversary of
Unix with a special two day "Unix 50" event at their historic Murray
Hill headquarters. This event should be one for the history books with
many notable Unix and computer pioneers in attendance...!

As I was making those photographs (which will be on display at the
event), I gained much insight into Bell Labs and the development of
Unix. However, it was some of the more personal stories and anecdotes
that brought Bell Labs to life and gave me a feel for the people
behind the code. One such time was when Ken Thompson (who is an
accomplished pilot) told me how he traveled to Russia after the fall
of the Soviet Union in order to fly in a MiG-29 fighter jet... Brian
Kernighan told me about how a certain portrait of Peter Weinberger
found its way into some very interesting places. These included the
concrete foundation of a building on Bell Labs campus, the cover
images printed onto Unix CD-ROMs, and most notably, painted on the top
of a nearby water tower.

Which brings us to another important piece of Unix mythology that I
learned about: the fictitious Bell Labs employee G.R. Emlin (a.k.a.
"the gremlin").... A lot of this folklore (including the gremlin) is
going to be on display at the Unix 50 event. The archivists at Bell
Labs have outdone themselves by pulling together a massive collection
of artifacts taken from the labs where Unix was developed for over 30
years. I was able to photograph a few of these artifacts last year,
but so much more will be exhibited at this event -- including several
items from the personal archives of some attendees.

As if that wasn't enough, the event will also showcase a number of
vintage computers and a look into Bell Labs future with a tour of
their Future X Labs.

The article includes some more quick stories about the Unix pioneers
at Bell Labs (including "the gremlin") and argues that "the decision
to freely distribute Unix's source code (to anyone who asked for it)
inadvertently set the stage for the free and open source software
movements that dominate the technology industry today...

"In hindsight, maybe 1969 should be called the 'summer of code.'"'

-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/10/12/1625237

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Waikato, NZ
+64 (7) 858-5174
http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/
http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
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