Dennis Ritchie (standing with Ken Thompson in the 1973 photo above) is a revered figure in the history of computing. But before he became a legend for his contributions to the world of operating systems and programming languages, Ritchie was a humble graduate student in applied mathematics at Harvard University, spending his share of time playing videogames and arguing with the university library about the cost of binding an academic paper.

Recently the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley caught a glimpse of this forgotten moment in time, rediscovering a copy of Ritchie’s final dissertation which had been presumed lost for over half a century. Written in 1968, when he was just 27 years old, the paper is a chance to peek at the earliest days of computer science, to understand the challenges faced by pioneers who came before us, and appreciate an intellect that left behind a legacy we’re still building on today. But maybe it’s also a reminder of just how far we’ve come — and how much technology itself can change over the course of a single lifetime.

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