"C has been highly influential in the design and syntax of other languages including C++, Objective-C, C#, Java, and PHP, among many others. Many languages have adopted the basic syntactic elements and structured programming approach of the C language. C was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie while at AT&T Bell Labs 1969–1972. C was born out of the need for a new language for the PDP-11 minicomputer that used the Unix operating system (written by Ken Thompson). From its inception, C has had a close relation to Unix; in fact the operating system was subsequently rewritten in C, making it the first OS to be written in a language other than assembly. The language was dubbed “C” as its predecessor was named “B,” a simplified version of BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language). The first formal specification was published as The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie (1978) [ 26 ] often referred to as “The K&R Book” which would later become the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) C standard. C gained in popularity and directly influenced object-oriented variations of it. Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ while at Bell Labs from 1979–1983. Brad Cox and Tom Love developed Objective-C from 1981–1983 at their company Stepstone."