Yeah, that v4 tape find was kinda neat!

I can't help but think, older sources may still exist, somewhere?

I mean, not just because I helped restore some (e.g. https://code.google.com/archive/p/unix-jun72/ USENIX presentation on such findings here, PDF of Toomey's 2009 on "The Restoration of Ancient UNIX Artifacts": https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf) and some of those collaborators went even deeper, e.g. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010IAHC...32c..74T/abstract "First Edition Unix: Its Creation and Restoration" (from 2010) and because well, for the 50th Anniversary of UNIX, they booted up a system with a version supposedly dating back to 1969 "The Earliest Unix Code: An Anniversary Source Code Release" (2019): https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-earliest-unix-code-an-anniversary-source-code-release/

But also, this: "1971 Bob Fabry buys UNIX license for $99 to share with students" (from https://www.berkeley.edu/about/history-discoveries/ though, you have to click "Contributions/Discoveries" then click on 1977 and I'll note: there's a typo within the associated image of "FreeBDS" when I am pretty sure they intended to write FreeBSD" so y'know, maybe not the most accurate source of earlier provenance outside of Bell Labs? Still, definitely older than the University of Utah UNIX v4 tape from 1974).

#AncientUNIX #UNIX #Artifacts #SoftwarePreservation #History #OurStory