{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommandlineheroes.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fthe-c-change-P6QWv41F","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"The C Change","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/7dfa8d26-0674-443c-944c-bfd6457bf0cf/6436ac1d-1e67-448b-b502-7dd5aff9c30c/ep8-stitcher-3000x3000.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"<iframe src=\"https://player.simplecast.com/3d99eb43-d06f-489e-928b-d73157459e67\" height=\"200\" width=\"100%\" title=\"The C Change\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"></iframe>","height":200,"description":"C and UNIX are at the root of modern computing. Many of the languages we’ve covered this season are related to or at least influenced by C. But C and UNIX only happened because a few developers at Bell Labs created both as a skunkworks project.\n\nBell Labs was a mid-twentieth century center for innovation. Jon Gertner describes it as an “idea factory.” One of their biggest projects in the 1960s was helping build a time-sharing operating system called Multics. Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin explains the hype around time-sharing at the time—it was described as potentially making computing accessible as a public utility. Large teams devoted years of effort to build Multics—and it wasn’t what they had hoped for. Bell Labs officially moved away from time-sharing in 1969. But as Andrew Tanenbaum recounts, a small team of heroes pushed on anyways. C and UNIX were the result. Little did they know how much their work would shape the course of technology."}