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He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana
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He graduated with a B.S and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley
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Immediately after graduating, Ken Thompson joined Bell Labs Computing Research Department. While there, he was working on the Multics project.
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By 1969, Thompson develops the UNIX operating System. The system was developed to run and operate on smaller microcomputers that were being developed in the late 1960s.
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Thompson rewrote C language in the same year in a simple, short and easily understandable manner. Besides, the use of the “C” language made UNIX operating system extremely portable as it was able to operate on different hardware platforms. From then till to date, “C” became an important programming language in computer science.
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B programming language became a precursor of C programming language which was completed by Ritchie in 1972.
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Thompson discovered that it was necessary to include a programming language in the operating system. Together with Dennis Richie, they managed to create B programming language to enhance the operating
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Thompson decided to introduce UNIX to the world through a publication that made the operating visible in various platforms especially in the academic community especially in universities.
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Thompson left Bell Labs to work on a specific project of installation of “Version 6 Unix”.
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"Belle," a chess-playing computer Thompson developed with Joe H. Condon, wins the U.S. and World Computing Chess Championships.
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The award was attributed to his contribution in designing a UNIX operating system.
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on Plan 9 project which was a new operating system. The project was solely based on UNIX operating system but it contained a variety of innovations. During Plan 9 projects, Thompson saw an opportunity and created a Unicode transformation format.
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In the 1990s, both Thompson and Ritchie worked with other researchers to create a new operating system called “Inferno”.
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After working at Bell Labs, Thompson finally retired in 2000 and moved to California to work on other projects including Google where he developed and designed Go programming language.
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