My Exposure to Multics
I had the good fortune early in my career to work as a system administrator on the Multics operating system. I worked in the computer center of a company in Columbus, Ohio called Industrial Nucleonics. (Industrial Nucleonics was later changed to AccuRay since they were known more by the product they manufactured. AccuRay is now a part of ABB .) Along with General Motors and Ford, Industrial Nucleonics was one of the early commercial installations of Multics, being originally installed in the 1976-77 timeframe. I became a Multics SysAdmin in 1979. You will find me on the Multicians website under People .
Multics License Plate: California (1983-1994)
By the time I moved to Silicon Valley in 1983, I was still so enamoured with Multics that I decided to get it emblazened on a vanity license plate. With the popularity of vanity plates in California and with the prevalence of computer systems exposure in Silicon Valley, I was surprised that no one had already reserved "MULTICS".In retrospect, I shouldn't have been so surprised that I could easily acquire the name. In the 11 years that I had the plate (1983-1994), I think I only got a total of 2 comments about it — mostly from recent MIT transplants to Silicon Valley. MIT had used Multics in their curriculum until the early 1980s.
Multics License Plate: North Carolina (1994-1996)
When I moved from Silicon Valley to Research Triangle Park in North Carolina in 1994, I decided to uphold the vanity plate tradition. Again, I had absolutely no problem getting the "MULTICS" license plate. I only kept that plate for a couple of years and never got a single comment about it the whole time I had it on my car. Multics did not seem to be even a distant memory of the computer literate in this state … it was a total unknown. A few people in North Carolina did ask me what my license plate meant. I tried my best to explain it but they always seemed to lose interest within a couple of sentences.Even though this took place over a decade past my Silicon Valley experience, I was still somewhat surprised by the lack of familiarity. One of the hottest start-ups of the 1990s was the first commercial Linux venture – Red Hat in Raleigh. With so much operating system expertise in the Raleigh area and because Multics begat Unix which begat Linux, I assumed there would be plenty of Multics name recognition in the region. But nothing! However, more than a decade after I gave up the license plate, I did meet bona fide hardcore Linux guy from Red Hat named Eric Troan. He knew all about Multics … so my faith in RTP was restored. 
What's with the license plate frame?
When Unix first became popular in the mid 1970's, the Multics aficionados were shocked at how inferior the new Unix operating system was. After all, Unix had it's origins at Bell Labs and consisted of several members of the original Project MAC team that had created Multics. Most Multicians felt ripped off since Unix had an architectecture and command set that looked like vaguely familiar to Multics but contained only a portion of the original Multics functionality. Unix was seen as an emasculation of the much more comprehensive and powerful Multics. I forget who authored the original play on words, but the following expression rang true in the Multics community:Unix is merely Multics with no balls.
Mar 4, 2019