https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o
In the 1960s-1970s, Ken Thompson co-invented the UNIX operating system along with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. He also worked on the language B, the operating system Plan 9, and the language Go. He and Ritchie won the Turing Award. He now works at Google. He's interviewed by Brian Kernighan of "K&R" fame.
This talk took place May 4, 2019. Videography courtesy of @thegurumeditation (Facebook), @thegurumeditate (Twitter)
[Ed note: We generally do not post stories that are strictly video-sourced, but given the stature of the participants in the programming world, I decided to make an exception. If videos are not interesting to you, please wait a bit and another story will be along before too long.]
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David C Brock interviewed Ken Thompson for the Computer History Museum. It's a long interview with a video with a written transcript. The video is just over 4.5 hours long. The transcript weighs in at 64 pages as a downloadable PDF locked behind a CPU- and RAM-chewing web app.
This is an oral history interview with Ken Thompson, created in partnership by the Association for Computing Machinery and the Computer History Museum, in connection with his A.M. Turing Award in 1983. The interview begins with Thompson's family background and youth, detailing the hobbies he pursued intently from electronics and radio projects, to music, cars, and chess. He describes his experience at the University of California, Berkeley, and his deepening engagement with computers and computer programming there.
The interview then moves to his recruitment to the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his experience of the Multics project. Thompson next describes his development of Unix and, with Dennis Ritchie, the programming language C. He describes the development of Unix and the Unix community at Bell Labs, and then details his work using Unix for the Number 5 Electronic Switching System. Thompson details his Turing Award lecture, the work on compromised compilers that led to it, and his views on computer security.
Next, he details his career in computer chess and work he did for Bell Labs artist Lillian Schwartz. Thompson describes his work on the Plan 9 operating system at Bell Labs with Rob Pike, and his efforts to create a digital music archive. He then details his post Bell Labs career at Entrisphere and then Google, including his role in Google Books and the creation of the Go programming language.
Previously:
(2025) Why Bell Labs Worked
(2022) Unix History: A Mighty Origin Story
(2019) Vintage Computer Federation East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan Interviews Ken Thompson
canopic jug writes:
The 1517 Fund has an article exploring why Bell Labs worked so well, and what is lacking in today's society to recreate such a research environment:
There have been non-profit and corporate giants with larger war chests than Ma Bell. AT&T started Bell Labs when its revenue was under $13 B (current USD). During the great depression, when Mervin Kelly laid the foundation for the lab, AT&T's revenue was $22 B (current USD).
Inflation adjusted, Google has made more than AT&T did at Bell Labs' start since 2006. Microsoft, 1996. Apple, 1992.
Each has invested in research. None have a Bell Labs.
Academia's worse. Scientists at the height of their careers spend more time writing grants than doing research. Between 1975 and 2005, the amount of time scientists at top tier universities spent on research declined by 20%. Time spent on paperwork increased by 100%. To quote the study, "experienced secular decline in research time, on the order of 10h per week." 2
[...] Reportedly, Kelly and others would hand people problems and then check in a few years later.3 Most founders and executives I know balk at this idea. After all, "what's stopping someone from just slacking off?" Kelly would contend that's the wrong question to ask. The right question is, "Why would you expect information theory from someone who needs a babysitter?"
Micromanagement and quantification also take their toll.
Previously:
(2024) The Incredible Story Behind the First Transistor Radio
(2024) Is It Possible to Recreate Bell Labs?
(2022) Unix History: A Mighty Origin Story
(2019) Vintage Computer Federation East 2019 -- Brian Kernighan Interviews Ken Thompson
(2017) US Companies are Investing Less in Science
Processed by kolie
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:05PM
Need more stature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:25PM (3 children)
I approve. Now someone go watch the thing and spill out the gist here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:09PM (2 children)
First bit was Ken Thompson describing how he resisted offers from Bell Labs. Sounds like it was a near thing that they managed to hire him in the first place.
Recommended!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)
The story of unix pipes is even better! Starts ~30 minutes in.
Ends with a frenzy of converting all the utilities they had to work with pipes--in a few evenings.
Then grep -- which Ken wrote for himself until his boss asked for a way to "search for things". Ken cleaned up his code and delivered it to his boss the next day...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @06:05PM
Kernighan talking about grep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfOnGZUZDk [youtube.com]
That is a great YouTube series if you like this computer history stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:52PM
https://hooktube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o [hooktube.com]
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:40PM (10 children)
and I lost much of the respect I had for him for it. Kind of how I admire, and at the same time intensely despise Werner Von Braun.
I hope he lives long enough to feel the shame...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:18PM (5 children)
I think you'll find life more manageable if you acknowledge their humanity.
We don't all come from the same place and we don't all hold the same opinions. This shouldn't take away from respect for great work.
I can even go so far as to admire Nazi engineering without obviously admiring Nazis in general. Likewise Michael Jackson made some great music, but hey, he was also a pedophile. I don't consider working for Google to be in the same league as those two examples.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:31PM (4 children)
I don't see how Google is really different than Bell anyway.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @05:43PM (1 child)
"I don't see how Google is really different than Bell anyway."
Get back to us on that after anyone at Google wins a Nobel prize for their research, kid.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:11PM
Google employees won several ACM Turing awards. Alphabet has stakes in a couple of projects of Nobel winners in medicine and energy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:09PM (1 child)
Ken Thompson explains this (at least partially) in the video. As I recall, the Bell System was a national monopoly and made a fee on every phone (instrument, line, call?). As the research arm of the Bell System, Bell Labs got 1% of that enormous fee -- so everyone with a phone was funding Bell Labs.
Google isn't quite that much of a monopoly...(?)
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday May 15 2019, @04:05AM
Bell System, at one time was so huge in U.S.A. Said, monopoly. Even though certain places were GTE.
Google, in this Age of Cyber, is amazingly big. They have their cyber on 85% of the Cell Phones -- of our entire World!! Some people are saying, monopoly. Even though iPhone is very successful!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:27PM
And I'm sure losing the respect of a janitor really upsets him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
Why do you despise Werner Von Braun? Just b/c he worked for NASA? What about all the good he did trying to free Germany from infiltration and enslavement?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @03:34AM
Wernher von Braun might have been guilty of crimes against humanity [archive.is].
Von Braun's rocket programme that produced the V-1 and V-2 made heavy use of slave labour from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where some 20,000 died from illness, horrible working conditions, or outright execution. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by them when they were used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 15 2019, @07:27AM
He started in 2006.
These were still "Don't be evil" times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @09:58PM (1 child)
Typical patriarchical bullshit. How about a story on the Latina woman who invented Unix?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @11:10PM
I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you.