Whitesmiths

Whitesmiths was the first commercial C programming language compiler. Written for the PDP-11, it was released in 1977 or 1978 and compiled a version of C similar to that accepted by Unix version 6 (Dennis Ritchie's original C compiler). It was an entirely-new implementation, borrowing no code from Unix. Today, it is mainly remembered for lending its name to a particular indentation style, originally used in the code examples which accompanied it.

Whitesmiths Ltd., which produced the compiler, was based in Westford, Massachusetts. The company's president from 1978-1988 was P. J. Plauger. This company no longer seems to exist - the only company now (November 2004) bearing the name of Whitesmiths Ltd. is apparently an Australian one (founded 1986), specializing in telecommunications-related CRM software.