Professor Bob Fabry

A computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he conceived of the idea of obtaining DARPA funding for a radically improved version of AT&T UNIX and set up the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG). Also called the Berkeley Fast File System, the BSD Fast File System or FFS, it is a distant descendant of the original file system used by Version 7 UNIX. In the fall of 1979 he responded to DARPA's interest in moving towards UNIX by writing a proposal suggesting that Berkeley develop an enhanced version of 3BSD for the use of the DARPA community. He took a copy of his proposal to a meeting of DARPA image processing and VLSI contractors, plus representatives from Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, the developers of the ARPAnet. There was some reservation whether Berkeley could produce a working system; however, the release of 3BSD in December 1979 assuaged most of the doubts. With the increasingly good reputation of the 3BSD release to validate his claims, he was able to get an 18-month contract with DARPA beginning in April 1980. He also arranged the contract with DARPA to add TCP/IP to their BSD operating system, making it the first Internet capable O/S. Upon setting up the Computer Systems Research Group He immediately hired Laura Tong to handle the project administration, and then turned his attention to finding a project leader to manage the software development. He assumed that since Bill Joy had just passed his Ph.D. qualifying examination, he would rather concentrate on completing his degree than take the software development position. But Joy expressed his interest in taking charge of the further development of UNIX, and though surprised by the offer, he took little time to agree. The project started promptly. In 1988, after he had retired from Berkeley, he helped design and build radio beacons for the International Amateur Radio Union. These beacons now help amateur and professional HF radio users determine which HF radio bands will best provide a path to which location around the world.