If you’ve ever combed boxes of old tech detritus in search of a nugget of pure gold, we know you’ll appreciate the excitement of discovering, in a dusty University of Utah storeroom, a tape labelled “UNIX Original from Bell Labs V4 (See manual for format)”. If the tape contains what’s promised on the label, this is a missing piece of computer history, because no complete copies of this version are known to exist.

The tape will be delivered by hand to the Computer History Museum, where we hope its contents will be safely retrieved for archive and analysis. The reporter of the find, research professor [Rob Ricci], identifies the handwriting as that of Jay Lepreau, someone whose word on which UNIX version it contained could, we hope, be trusted.

So if you happen to have a handy PDP-11 in your basement, you may soon be able to explore this 1973 version of the OS. We look forward to hearing from the Computer History Museum as they analyse the tape. Meanwhile, if this whole UNIX thing is new to you, we have a Bell Labs introduction to help you. Or check out the illustrious panel below, looking back at 50 years of UNIX.

youtube.com/embed/l03CF9_078I?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/09/have-t…

Rob Ricci

2025-11-06 20:49:19

While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973

Apparently no other complete copies are known to exist: gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Fourth_E…

We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum

#retrocomputing

UNIX Fourth Edition - Computer History Wiki

^gunkies.org