"tenex", where does the word come from?

[Larry Campbell]

In article <623 at sdcc12.UUCP> wa371 at sdcc12.UUCP (Bernd Riechelmann) writes:
>Recently learned about the tcsh shell, and the documentation says that 
>it is 'tenex' like.  I can not find tenex in the dictionary.
>Where does it come from and/or what does it mean?

*SIGH* ... how quickly important work in the field is forgotten...

TENEX is an operating system developed in the late 1960s by Bolt, Beranek,
and Newman (BBN).  It was one of the first demand-paged virtual memory
timesharing systems.  It ran on a DEC PDP-10 with a paging box built by BBN.
In 1973 DEC bought the rights to it, redesigned the file system for better
reliability, added lots of features, and called it TOPS-20.  Throughout
the 1970s, most of the major ARPANET sites ran either TENEX or TOPS-20.

If TENEX isn't studied in every introductory operating systems course,
it should be.  Along with Multics, UNIX, and VM, TENEX is one of the
seminal operating systems to have seen commercial use.  In particular,
it has the cleanest and most efficient virtual memory implementation
I've seen.

One of TENEX's most innovative features is its command processor, or EXEC.
I think it's the friendliest user interface I've ever seen that doesn't
get in your way.  (Menus are friendly, but after about an hour you're
ready to put your foot through the screen.)

Now it's my turn to plead ignorance...  I have heard of tcsh but never
seen one.  Is it public domain?  Can I get a copy?  I am a big fan of
TENEX (TOPS-20 actually), and would love to have a similar user interface
for UNIX.
-- 
Larry Campbell       MCI: LCAMPBELL          The Boston Software Works, Inc.
UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell      120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp at harvisr.harvard.edu     (617) 367-6846