While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973

Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_Edition

We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum

#retrocomputing

@ricci nice!! This is a big deal! We need full interview with the staff member who discovered this, pictures of the computer room, etc. fill up that deetz truck and deliver it to us ASAP! 😁

@greatquux It probably spent most of its life sitting in my former advisor Jay Lepreau's office, whose handwriting is on the label. We've only had this specific storage space for like a decade.

The staff member who found it is planning to drive it to the CHM, rather than ship it, so maybe the story will get more interesting after that - other than, we we cleaning out some stuff and this was in a box :)

@ricci @greatquux "something something bandwidth of a station wagon..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
Sneakernet - Wikipedia

@jspath55 @ricci @greatquux

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
–Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981