Ken Thompson co-developed Unix with Dennis M. Ritchie and other collaborators. Their 1974 paper describes a compact multi-user operating system with a hierarchical file system, asynchronous operating-system processes and a user-selectable command language.[ref]
One useful design idea is to combine small programs through a Pipe. The producing program writes an output stream and the consuming program reads an input stream; they need not implement each other's task. The operating system supplies the connection and scheduling. This makes composition a reusable system facility rather than a new integration mechanism for every pair of programs.[ref]
The UNIX Time-Sharing System by Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken Thompson. §5, Processes and Images, pipes and the shell
Portrait of Ken Thompson
. Portrait from the Jargon File, recorded as public domain on Wikimedia Commons. Source.
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