Skip to content
◈ALB Atlas

TENEX Dead

TENEX
KindOperating system
Appeared1969
StatusDead
CreatorBBN
PlatformPDP-10

BBN's paged-virtual-memory PDP-10 system — DEC later absorbed it into TOPS-20, and the ARPANET ran on it.

Ran on PDP-10
Descendants TOPS-20

BBN's TENEX (1969) was the first commercial virtual-memory OS on a PDP-10 — Daniel Murphy's paging system that made a 256K-word machine feel unlimited, plus the command-line completion and JSYS system calls hackers still praise.\n\nDEC licensed it as TOPS-20; the 'TENEX' name survives in folklore and in the command-completion conventions that became universal.