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Birth
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana. -
Education
Receives a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley -
Education
Receives a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley. -
Bell Labs
Hired by Bell Labs after graduation and is assigned to work on the Multics project with Dennis Ritchie. -
B
Develops the B programming language with Dennis Ritchie. -
Space Travel
Develops the video game "Space Travel". -
PDP-7
After Bell Labs withdraws from the Multics Project, Thompson begins to rewrite "Space Travel" so it can be ported to the PDP-7. -
Early Beginnings
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie lead a team that begins development of a new operating system using the tools that were left from the Multics project. -
UNIX
The operating system developed by Thompson and Ritchie's team is completed and named UNIX. -
PDP-11/20
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie receive funding for a PDP-11/20. -
UNIX Programmer's Manual
The UNIX Programmer's Manual is published. -
C
UNIX is rewritten in the C language. -
Public Presentation
UNIX is presented for the first time to the outside world at the 1973 Symposium on Operating System Principles. -
UC Berkeley
Thompson takes a sabbatical from Bell Labs and goes to UC Berkeley in order to install Unix Version 6 on a PDP-11/70. *Unix at Berkeley would later become its own system, known as the Berkeley Software Distribution. -
National Academy of Engineering
Thompson is elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "designing UNIX, an operating system whose efficiency, breadth, power, and style have guided generation's exploitation of minicomputers." -
Turing Award
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie jointly receive the Turing Award for "their development of generic operation systems theory and specifically for the implementation of the UNIX operating system." -
Belle
Thompson along with Joseph Condon create Belle, a world champion chess computer. -
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
Both Thompson and Dennis Ritchie receive the Richard W. Hamming Medal for "the origination of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language." -
UTF-8
Thompson helps develop the UTF-8 encoding scheme. *To this day, UTF-8 is the dominant character encoding for the World Wide Web. -
Inferno
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie begin to work on a new operating system called Inferno. -
Inferno Beta
The Inferno Beta is released to the public. *The latest version of Inferno (version 4) was released on March 28, 2015. -
Computer History Museum
Both Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are induced as fellows of the Computer History Museum for "the co-creation of the UNIX operating system and for development of the C programming language." -
National Medal of Technology
Thompson and Dennis Ritchie jointly receive the 1998 National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton for "co-inventing the UNIX operating system and C programming language." -
Tsutomu Kanai Award
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers choose Thompson to receive the first Tsutomu Kanai Award for "his role in creating the UNIX operating system, which for decades has been a key platform for distributed systems work." -
Retirement
Thompson retires from Bell Labs. -
Period: to
Entrisphere Inc.
Worked at Entrisphere, Inc. as a fellow. -
Google
Thompson is hired by Google as a Distinguished Engineer. -
A New Project
Thompson, Robert Griesemer, and Rob Pike begin development of the Go programming language. -
Go
The Go programming language is publicly released. *The latest version of Go (version 1.8) was released on February 16, 2017. -
Japan Prize
Thompson, along with Dennis Ritchie, is awarded the Japan Prize for Information and Communications for "the pioneering work in the development of the Unix operating system." -
Ending
Thompson is alive and well and still currently works at Google as a Distinguished Engineer.
