ken thompson
     
         the principal inventor of the unix operating
        system and author of the b language, the predecessor of
        c.
     
        in the early days ken used to hand-cut unix distribution
        tapes, often with a note that read "love, ken".  old-timers
        still use his first name sometimes uncapitalised, because
        it's a login name and mail address in third-person reference;
        it is widely understood on usenet in particular that
        without a last name "ken" refers only to ken thompson.
        similarly, dennis without last name means dennis ritchie
        and he is often known as dmr.
     
        ken was first hired to work on the multics project, which
        was a huge production with many people working on it.  multics
        was supposed to support hundreds of on-line logins but could
        barely handle three.
     
        in 1969, when bell labs withdrew from the project, ken got fed
        up with multics and went off to write his own operating
        system.  people said "well, if zillions of people wrote
        multics, then an os written by one guy must be unix".  there
        was some joking about eunichs as well.
     
        ken's wife bonnie and son corey then 18 months old went to
        visit family in san diego.  ken spent one week each on the
        kernel, file system, etc., and finished unix in one month
        along with developing spacewar or was it "space travel"?.
     
        see also back door, brute force, demigod, wumpus.
     
        1999-01-26
     
     
see also:
unix operating system b c usenet dennis ritchie 
multics kernel file system spacewar back door 
brute force demigod wumpus