“The people who invented Unix were not trying to teach you how to use a computer as we understand computers today; rather, they were educating professionals as to the best way to operate an incredibly heavy and expensive piece of industrial equipment. The 1974 paper says that you can run Unix on cheap computers, computers that cost as little as $40,000 ($202,000 in 2014.) Right now there are two Unix workstations in my closet that cost $35 each.”

— From Paul Ford’s The Great Works of Software, re: The Unix Time-Sharing System, Richie & Thompson, Bell Laboratories, 1974.