Without Unix, the Internet would come to a screeching halt. Most telephone calls could not be made...electronic banking would cease...national defense systems would crumble...and there would have never been "Jurassic Park"!
The roots of Unix can be traced to AT&T Bell Labs of Murray Hill, New Jersey. Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie (both of whom were also instrumental in the C Programming Language) first crafted a crude form of Unix on a PDP-7 machine in the summer of 1969.
"...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..."
- Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972
Although Linux is the free Unix used by millions, a
number of other quality (both free and commercial) implementations exist.
Unlike marketers of other "operating systems", Unix does not
lock one into a single vendor:
e pluribus Unix!