Bell bottom-era tape unearthed, could contain lost piece of Unix history
Summary
A nine-track tape reel labelled “UNIX Original From Bell Labs V4 (See Manual for format)” was discovered in storage at the University of Utah and is believed to contain a copy of UNIX Fourth Edition from circa 1973. Professor Robert Ricci posted the find; the handwriting on the label appears to be that of Jay Lepreau. The tape may represent one of the only complete copies of V4, the first UNIX release where the kernel and some core utilities were rewritten in C.
The university is delivering the tape to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Al Kossow (Bitsavers) has outlined a recovery plan involving careful analog head tapping, a multi-channel high-speed ADC into RAM, and analysis with Len Shustek’s readtape tools — a process likely to recover data from this 1970s 1200ft, 9-track 3M media.
Key Points
- The tape was found at the University of Utah and labelled as UNIX V4 from Bell Labs (circa 1973).
- Handwriting on the label matches Jay Lepreau, adding to the tape’s provenance.
- UNIX Fourth Edition is historically important as the first version with kernel components rewritten in C; very little of V4 survives today.
- The tape will be taken to the Computer History Museum for recovery rather than being shipped, reducing risk of damage.
- Al Kossow (Bitsavers) plans a careful recovery: analogue head taping, multi-channel ADC capture into RAM, and use of the readtape analysis tools.
- If successfully read, the tape could fill gaps in the early UNIX source archive and be valuable to researchers and historians.
Why should I read this?
Short and sweet: if you care about computing history, this is proper treasure. Someone may have just dug up an original UNIX V4 copy — the edition where large parts were rewritten in C. That could mean original source files, utilities or documentation that have been missing for decades. It’s a tiny drama with big potential payoffs for archivists, historians and anyone curious about how modern OSes came to be.
Author note
Punchy take: this isn’t just nostalgia — it’s potentially a primary source that could change what we know about UNIX’s early C-era development. Keep an eye on the recovery; if it pans out, researchers will be poring over code that helped shape decades of computing.