Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie win Japan Prize

"When Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie began creating the Unix operating system in 1969, they did not envision that their work would become a backbone of the computer revolution that has transformed the world.

"The two Bell Labs computer scientists - named today as winners of the 2011 Japan Prize for information and communications - just wanted to build a better operating system.

""I did it as a backlash against the bad operating systems of the day," said Thompson, 67. "We were just trying to get something better to get our own work done."

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