unix oral history site

... Ken [Thompson] had worked on the MIT MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service) system. In fact, the original name of UNIX was UNICS, a joke made by Brian Kernighan standing for the UNIplexed Information and Computing Service, since the PDP-7 version could support only one user--Ken. After too many bad puns about EUNUCHS being a castrated MULTICS, the name was changed to UNIX. But even MULTICS wasn't first. Before it was the above-mentioned CTSS, designed by the same team at MIT. | andrew s. tanenbaum

unix philosophy, mike gancarz, 1995

the line "emasculated multics is unics" comes from: there can be only one | based on peter salus book about unix

dennis ritchie, an early retrospect, 1978

logicomix nicenicenice

web history and future day at cern, march 2009: the video. featuring ben segal, jean-francois groff, tim berners-lee and robert cailliau ua.

includes some lines about how the name w-w-w came into existence. the explanations resemble the notion of earlier years to find names which ended with -ac - somehow.

web history project