Retromulticsshellcomputing-history
Louis Pouzin Named the Shell, Then Colleagues Built It From His Flowchart After He Left
Pouzin’s account separates the command language’s design from its implementation by Glenda Schroeder and a GE colleague.
The shell’s designer left the country. The flowchart stayed behind, which turned out to be enough for somebody else to get the software running.
In his first-person history, Louis Pouzin traces the idea through his work on CTSS in 1963 and 1964. He wanted to leave long jobs running overnight rather than spend the evening walking through commands himself. His RUNCOM work let a saved command sequence take arguments.
The larger ambition was to use commands as building blocks, “just like subroutine libraries.” That is a different ambition from drawing a box where a user can type.
Pouzin places the name shell around late 1964 or early 1965. With colleagues still debating language syntax, he made a flowchart before returning to France in mid-1965.
His account credits Glenda Schroeder at MIT and a GE colleague with producing the first Multics shell after he left. He does not name that colleague. The surviving attribution has a blank in it, and there is no reason to fill it with a guess.
The unnamed GE colleague is the detail worth carrying forward. Another surviving note could still change who gets remembered for turning that diagram into a working shell.