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Bell Labs Unix Group Disbanded

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the sad-days-of-history dept.

wandazulu writes "Peter Salus over at UnixReview.com is reporting that AT&T Department 1127, responsible for creating and maintaining Unix, has been officially disbanded. The article provides an interesting "where are they now?" list of the original authors of Unix."

18 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. we've still got Google, for now by yagu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this is sad, and a little ominous. I worked at a telco years ago, and managed to fanagle a chat on the phone with Ritchie one time when a Bell worker was on site for some software installations. Cool.

    Anyway, in my arguments to encourage research into trying new ways of doing things, I always used Bell Labs as my favorite example/reason why we should. Guess I won't have that anymore. Sigh.

    What I fear most is the lack of research for research's sake. A lot of things we use today are a direct or indirect result of companies allowing a certain amount of "what if" thinking and activity to go on. Even better, some companies, like Bell Labs actually allocated specifically for that.

    I don't think research in commercial context is really research at all and may even be counterproductive in creating new and better technology (if commercial research into products were for "quality", would there even be a Britney Spears?).

    The last bastion I know of and trust is Google. They seem to be dedicated to the cause. But, they're young, they're new, and they haven't had to deal with stockholders in bad times yet.

    1. Re:we've still got Google, for now by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I think this is sad, and a little ominous.

      Maybe and maybe not. Perhaps they believe that UNIX has run it's course, and are giving Linux the nod? Of course I don't really know what I'm talking about...

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    2. Re:we've still got Google, for now by zardo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Google doesn't do any research. What does google do? They may facilitate research with their books.google.com and whatnot, but everything they do is money motivated. They make huge amounts of money. If your feelings were accurate google would be spending a lot more on research.

      There is a lot of research that goes on you just never hear about it. How about http://www.stirlingengine.com/ or http://www.nanosolar.com/ ?? Those companies founders are risking it all, and if they fail, you'll never hear about it.

    3. Re:we've still got Google, for now by Crixus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree completely. The single most important factor in research (and it can't be controlled) is SERENDIPITY.

          All areas of research must be funded, because they often yield interesting stuff not sought for. I can not express this strongly enough.

        Rich...

      --
      Ignore Alien Orders
    4. Re:we've still got Google, for now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      > Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. -- Rob Pike circa 1991

      Jeez, this was right around the release of SVR4. Unix wasn't smelling bad, it was just starting to look like a real OS.

    5. Re:we've still got Google, for now by zardo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      No, you look at labs.google.com tell me how any of that is research? They call it the lab for public relations reasons. Making an image search utility is not research, neither is buying picassa, or buying a mapping company, it simply isn't research, it's capital investment.

      Bell spent billions on research, the "apple man" voice was invented at bell labs, they did a whole lot of voice synthesis research that I am familiar with. They did a lot of other stuff, I am not as familiar with, but voice synthesis, voice recognition, that is research. They were on the cutting edge as a matter of fact.

      I think there is supporting evidence that Microsoft actually does do valuable research, I'm not one of these anti-MS zealots, they could do more though. Bill Gates donates a lot of money to charity which is noble of him also.

  2. Good times by saddino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked at Bell Labs in Murray Hill from 1985 through 1989, and though I did not work in Dept 1127, I did get the amazing chance to see what Bell Labs was all about: the incredible, vibrant home to tremendously talented scientists from the UNIX gurus to the low temperature physics gods. As a young high school and then college student, aspiring to join their ranks full time, I was mesmerized by the environment where a 2pm coffee break could evolve into a deep discussion of networking theory and then reflect sincerely on the goings-on in the world. Bell Labs was a magical place, and hopefully, the seeds of similar pure research incubators are being sewn in today's tech powerhouses such as Google.

    1. Re:Good times by triple6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I was lucky enough to work in Building 2 for a couple of years and am happy to have been in Murray Hill at all. It was as magical a place as everyone says. Just being around so many great thinkers made me feel smarter too. I'll certainly miss it. (I wonder if the pjw's xface made of magnets still appears at the top of Stair 8)

  3. Another name to add to the list... by GillBates0 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Steve Johnson - a 20 year veteran of Bell Labs, author of yacc, lint and the pcc, and former president of USENIX now works at Mathworks.

    I had the good fortune of meeting the gentleman when I interviewed with Mathworks a couple of years ago. I was taken aback by his humility, and the poor guy was embarrassed when I requested his autograph :) He has a former license plate in his office that reads "YACCMAN".

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  4. Remember by pcnetworx1 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If Bell can fall, then this event only proves that Google will someday fall. It is all just a great progression of humanity. And hopefully before that fall a little more technology will come to push mankind farther. Good job Department 1127!

  5. Doug McIlroy by theoddball · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Hell of a guy, and a prof who's still teaching undergrads. Bell Labs is where he did his best work, but he's still a very, very sharp guy.

    I mean, there's something to be said for learning data structures and operating systems from a guy who helped invent the idea of pipes.

    McIlroy's homepage.

  6. IBM still does research.... by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Although IBM http://www.research.ibm.com/ may be out of the disk drive business, they are still working on it. Take a look at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose http://www.almaden.ibm.com/ still going strong after all these years.

    1. Re:IBM still does research.... by TollBooth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The point that IBM is interested in profit is moot. My point was that IBM still actively pursues pure research whereas Google does not.

      The reason IBM Research remains today is that they were able to adapt and find a balance between profitability and pure research. My grip is that Google is being portrayed as the last keeper of this "dead" field and it is my belief that they are most certainly not.

      IBM Research was key in the development of the PC, relational databases, datamining, and countless other fields. One of the reasons IBM got out of the harddrive business was because research had progress so fast that noone was using it. Practically none of the harddrive businesses are profitable, except maybe Hitachi.

      However, IBM still is doing harddrive research, one major is example is the super dense stamp sized 1 GB harddrives that was mentioned here at some point. I don't think it's too much to ask to give IBM Research at nod for actually performing Research!

    2. Re:IBM still does research.... by T_Slothrop · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is certainly true that IBM does still pursue pure research (I work there, at Watson Labs), but Google does as well: all researchers there are encouraged to spend 10% (I think that is the number) of their time working on research of their choice. I believe that Rob Pike mentioned doing astrophysics work of some sort (correct me if I'm wrong--though I am sure it is unnecessary to say that in this forum!). It is hard to imagine what short-term benefit Google will gain from that.

  7. Diminishing Talent Pool? by ArticleI · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems like they would have a hard time attracting the talent to keep the group open. My dad, an 18 year Bell Labs veteran, left Telcordia /Bellcore/Bell Labs five years ago. The downturn in the tech industry forced many others to leave for more lucrative jobs while they were still available. Two of the math/CS teachers at my old high school were from Bell, for instance.

  8. Re:Serious question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A few things come to mind

    1) Making the command interpreter a user level process instead of an integral part of the kernel.

    2) Treating all files as simple streams of data. Mainframes of the day that I've had experience with all forced some type of record format on files.

    3) Making everything visible to the sytem as a file(file systems, devices, message queues). On other systems these are handled via special reserved words understood by the command interpreter or system.

    4) Pipes between processes.

    5) The C programming language itself.

    Much of this seems like common sense today, but they were new ideas around 1970. Some of them were probably taken from other research operating sytems of the time and reimplemented as software patents were'nt the problem they are today.

  9. Re:Like it or not, Microsoft does a lot of researc by jericho4.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You won't catch me singing Microsofts praises too often, but MS Research is an important contributer to CS today. For example, they employ Simon Peyton Jones, the guy behind Haskell and GHC.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  10. Re:Serious question... by jdh41 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You see, to me, mindless applications of fourier transforms and other mathematical techniques describes engineering, whereas coming up with new ideas and algorithms describes research.