World of Computer Science on Kenneth Lane Thompson
Kenneth Lane Thompson studied programming languages, operating systems, and computer games. He was one of the inventors of the UNIX operating system, perhaps the most widely used computer system in the world. He also invented the C programming language and co-developed several chess-playing machines.
UNIX is well known for its simplicity, generality, and portability. Thompson conceived of the system in the late 1960s, and together with Dennis Ritchie, a colleague working with him at Bell Laboratories, developed UNIX as an alternative to the old batch programming systems that dominated the industry at the time. Although Thompson created UNIX while working at Bell Labs, the system was developed independently by the two programmers. It was very unusual because it was not commercially marketed like other systems. Instead UNIX gained in popularity through a network of researchers long before it was released commercially, and it has had one of the longest gestation periods of any computer program. UNIX is now believed to be one of the most widely used systems in the world, supporting over twenty million dollars of equipment.
Kenneth Thompson was born on February 4, 1943 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Lewis Elwood Thompson, a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, and Anna Hazel Lane Thompson. He majored in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, also working at the computer center as well as participating in a work-study program at the General Dynamics Corporation. Thompson received his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1965 and his M.S. in electrical engineering in 1966, both from Berkeley.
Though Thompson's formal education was in electronic hardware and he built a lot of computers, he was very accomplished in developing computer software, and this is what he pursued professionally. After receiving his master's degree, Thompson went to work for the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. He married his wife Bonnie on July 2, 1967, and they had one son, Corey. Bell Labs was famous for its research productivity, and for the unconventional looks, dress, and work habits of some of its scientists. Thompson fitted in well--bearded, bespectacled, and long-haired, he wore a tee-shirt in one published picture. His work habits were also unusual, and he would sometimes put in thirty hours in a row without sleep while working on a project.
One of Thompson's greatest achievements at Bell Labs was inventing and then developing the UNIX with Ritchie. A computer operating system manages the housekeeping functions within a computer. By enabling the user to create, open, edit, and close data files, as well as move data from a disk to the screen or printer, and to store data on disks in addition to activating and using other programs, an operating system makes computers easy to run and fast. While at Bell Labs in the late 1960s, Thompson had been assigned to work on developing such a multi-tasking and multi-user system. Together with engineers from General Electric and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Thompson and other Bell Lab programmers began working on what was called Multics.
This multi-tasking and multi-user system would contrast in important ways with existing batch-operation computers. Batch computers required a user to create a stack of pre-punched data cards which were then run through the computer at one time. During this process, the computer could only apply its programming abilities to the one user's stack of cards, requiring all other users to wait for their jobs to get done. After waiting an hour or longer a user would get a print-out of results on paper. If users wanted to make any changes after seeing the results on the print-outs, they would have to punch out another stack of cards and wait to resubmit them to the computer for processing. Getting the results from simple changes in a data request could take a long time.
On the other hand, multi-tasking, multi-user computer systems would be structured in such a way that the flow of data inside the computer would allow it to process many jobs at once for numerous users. The benefits were obvious: users could get their results back quickly and get much more work done. Also, if a computer screen terminal was used as an input and output device, users could key their requests into the terminal, and the computer could display its response to the requests on the screen. Changes and revisions could be made immediately, while the computer could still run other programs. Multi-tasking, multi-user computer systems like UNIX have replaced batch processing almost completely, and when Thompson invented the program at Bell Labs in 1969, he started the ball rolling to create that change. In late 1988, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) licensed its millionth UNIX system.
In 1978 Thompson stopped working on UNIX and began other projects. Some of his later projects included another operating system called Plan 9, and computer chess. Chess had been one Thompson's boyhood hobbies, and he carried it into his adult years by making computers and computer programs that could play chess. One of these programs was so good that it became three-time American champion. Thompson also built a chess-playing computer, which he named "Belle." Besides programming, Thompson was also involved in teaching computing. During a 1975 sabbatical he taught upper division and graduate courses in computer science, including a seminar on the UNIX operating system, at the University of California at Berkeley. On another break in 1988, he taught computer science at the University of Sydney in Australia.
In 1993, after working for years on computer chess and another operating systems, Thompson began to work on digital audio encoding. He has received a number of awards for his contributions to computer programming, including the famous Turing award in 1983 from the Association for Computing Machinery, which he shared with Ritchie. The citation for the Turing award read as follows: "The success of the UNIX system stems from its tasteful selection of a few key ideas and their elegant implementation. The model of the UNIX system has led a generation of software designers to new ways of thinking about programming. The genius of the UNIX system is its framework, which enables programmers to stand on the work of others." Lane was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985.
Lane is now a distinguished staff member at Lucent Technologies, the parent company of Bell Labs. Bell Labs is considered the most famous research and development and organization in the world.
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