Hidden in storage, a University of Utah research associate happened upon the only known copy of this ‘revolutionary’ software

Storage room 3495 at his University of Utah computing lab had gotten so packed full of cardboard boxes, Aleks Maricq jokes it had become hard to even see the floor.

It rivaled a game of Jenga — or maybe Tetris — as the research associate took down one box after another to clear it out. There were old cords from unknown sources and mountains of papers that had been dumped from a former professor’s file cabinet, including old drawings from his kids and saved plane ticket stubs.

A few boxes in, though, Maricq stumbled on something unusual, a find older than the game of Tetris itself (created in 1985).

“I knew it was very old, likely very rare,” he said of his summer discovery. “And then after a quick Google search, I realized just how rare.”

It’s so old and rare, in fact, that the U. no longer has the computing equipment needed to confirm it is what the label says it is: “UNIX Original from Bell Labs V4.”

The 9-track magnetic tape discovery included the helpful note “see manual for format.” The less helpful part? No manual was found with it.

And the least helpful part: Even with the manual — and the right equipment — the tape is so old and fragile analysts likely only had one chance to read it.

“We didn’t want to risk anything,” Maricq said.

So they waited until Jon Duerig, another research associate at the U. computing lab, could drive it this December to California’s renowned Computer History Museum, where staff have the machinery and expertise. Mailing it could have resulted in damage, even with precautions, from heat or rough handling. And flying with the tape on a plane likely would’ve meant exposing it to radiation through security checks.

But now, after a journey more akin to The Oregon Trail computer game, the Computer History Museum has confirmed: It’s believed to be the only remaining copy of the full operating system that is the foundation for the computing we rely on today.

The tape of the UNIX software, version 4, was made in 1973 — 52 years ago — and only 20 copies were ever produced, said Robert Ricci, a research professor in the U.’s Kahlert School of Computing and one of the directors of the Flux Research Group, where Maricq and Duerig work.

UNIX V4 is the computer operating system, which basically tells the computer or device how to run, that serves as the basis for iOS on iPhones and macOS on Apple computers. Apple’s website today literally describes its products as having a “UNIX foundation.”

“The UNIX system was a pretty revolutionary way of thinking,” Ricci said.

For non-computer experts, Ricci compares it to the Ford Model T, an early car introduced in 1908 that paved the way for the cars of today.

“In a similar way, we can look at a Model T and recognize it’s not like any car that any of us drive now. But it’s got four wheels and a steering wheel,” he said.

Ricci added: “And in the same way that people are into old cars and restoring those, there are people really into these old operating systems.”

That includes the people at the U.’s Flux Research Lab. They’re excited to try to get it running on modern computers to see if there are any design notes left in it by the creators and review the source code on a deeper level.

A fragile format

Recovering the information on the tape was a difficult and delicate process. And it speaks to both the speed and transience of technology.

The UNIX operating system was cutting edge in 1973, and the U. once had one of the few early computers that could have processed the tape. But the school got rid of it long ago when it became obsolete.

If the Computer History Museum had just run the 9-track through a standard reel-to-reel tape reader, the tension on it could have broken the tape or even shattered it to pieces because of its age, Maricq said. It could have literally turned to dust.

There’s also a risk in unreeling 50-year-old tape based on how it was stored. Magnetic tape needs to be kept in cold temperatures for the best preservation. And since this tape was found in a box in a storage room — even though it looked like it was in good shape — the magnets and the chemicals on it also could have fused together over time, Maricq noted.

If it gets pulled apart too quickly, layers get stuck to the wrong side of the tape, making it nearly impossible to read.

“You don’t know what’s happened to that magnetic track over 50 years,” the research associated added.

With magnetic tracks, data was encoded by magnetizing parts of the tape either north or south to indicate the ones and zeros of coding. That also meant it could be reused and overwritten. It’s not the best method for keeping information any more. (Master tapes in the music record industry are facing the same fate.)

“At the time, they were doing their best at trying to make these tapes last a certain amount of time,” Maricq said.

As much as the software system on the tape has evolved, so have methods for saving information — from floppy disks to CDS to USBs to hard drives. Technology moves quickly, and sometimes that leaves information behind, Ricci said.

Luckily, the Computer History Museum had a way to reach back in time.

To decipher the tape, the staff there took measurements and photographs of it at a microscopic range to try to preserve the information. Even if a specific magnetized part is hard to read, the outlines should still be there.

It’s like taking a close-up picture of an old newspaper, Ricci said. Specific letters might be gone, but hopefully the context is still there around the missing parts or there’s a faint outline of what once was printed.

The recovery is so detailed that it actually ends up creating more data than what a 9-track can hold. The raw coding stored on the tape probably takes up about 20 megabytes, Maricq estimated — less data than a high-quality photo from a modern camera.

By comparison, the data collected is likely around 100 gigabytes. That’s about 5,000 times bigger.

The computers it would have run on, the professor said, were also far less powerful. Today’s dishwashers and toasters now have computer chips that are far superior.

How the tape got to the U.

The UNIX V4 operating system was transformative because it was the first to be written largely in the C programming language.

Before that, machine language was basically simple math. Operations were based on adding or multiplying numbers. Trying to write software with that, Ricci said, is complicated. Anything with images or text would’ve been extremely hard to produce.

The C programming language — which was created at Bell Labs, which made UNIX — was higher level and introduced strings of text for the first time.

It would’ve run on computers using teletypes. That was basically a typewriter, where each keystroke fed into a computer.

At the time, in the 1970s, Ricci estimates there would have been maybe two or three of those computers — called a PDP-11, or programmed data processor — in Utah that could have run UNIX V4, including the one at the U.

Having that technology is part of why he believes the U. got a copy of the rare software. The other part was the distinguished computing faculty at the school.

The new UNIX operating system would’ve been announced at conferences in the early 1970s, and a U. professor at the time named Martin Newell frequently attended those because of his own recognized work in the field, Ricci said.

In another box, stuffed in under manila envelopes, Maricq found a 1974 letter written to Newell from Ken Thompson at Bell Labs that said as soon as “a new batch comes from the printers, I will send you the system.”

Ricci and Maricq are unsure if the software was ever used. They reached out to Newell, who is now 72 and retired, as well as some of his former students. None of them recalled actually running it through the PDP-11.

Newell went on in 1975 to break his own ground in the field. He created one of the first-ever three-dimensional computer models: A ZCMI department store teapot, recreated with computer graphics to match the one he always kept on his office desk.

The teapot has become famous and ubiquitous in computing.

The Computer History Museum’s collection actually includes Newell’s physical teapot, which his digital model was meticulously based on.

Ricci called it “colliding history.” And it goes a little further.

‘Lots more’ to look through

The late Jay Lepreau also worked at the U.’s computing department and created the Flux Research Group that Ricci, Maricq and Duerig are now part of. Lepreau overlapped just barely with Newell’s tenure.

In 1978, Lepreau and a team at the U. worked with a group at the University of California, Berkeley. Together, they built their own clone of the UNIX operating system. They called it BSD, or Berkeley Standard Deviation. Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, worked with BSD, too, and it influenced his work.

Ultimately, it was Lepreau who saved the 9-track tape with the UNIX system on it in his U. office. And he’s why the university still has it today.

“He seems to have found it and decided it was worth keeping,” Ricci said.

It’s all a powerful nod to how the U. has been a pioneer in the computing field, the professor added, and today remains one of the more respected departments in the country for its research. The faculty there are well-known for discovering new developments and, apparently, rediscovering old ones along the way.

Now that the information has been recovered from the 9-track, the staff at the Flux Research Group hopes to make copies of the UNIX V4 system widely available so anyone can look at it. There will be a lot of fans in the computer world, he said, with interest.

The U. will also get the tape back from the museum. Maricq said it will likely be displayed in the university’s new engineering building that’s set to open in January 2027.

That’s why, the research associate said, he was cleaning out the storage room to begin with — to try to prepare for the move. He was mostly just excited to see the floor again. “I thought we’d find some old stuff, but I didn’t think it’d be anything like this,” he said.

And Maricq still has boxes to go through, including more believed to be from Lepreau’s office.

“There’s lots more stuff,” Ricci added. “We still have a bunch of his stuff.”

They’re not sure anything, though, could beat their already high score.

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