A good introduction to a new product or concept is vital. This is particularly true for a versatile software system such as UNIX. UNIX provides the depth and intelligence to make your computer work hard for you. It will help you create software and help you use your office automation equipment to create and edit documents. For your intro- duction to UNIX, you want a great little book. That is what this work is meant to be. This book is designed for non-computer specialists, especially for executives, ad- ministrators and managers who want to make better use of their software specialists and experts. The way this Springer edition has come to be published is itself a story. Back about 1980, the founder and president of one of the more successful microcomputer companies, Mr. Kazue Ishii of CEC, wanted to start somethig that would be brilliant, sophisticated, innovative, and which would grow steadily. Out of many proposals, the one he accepted happened to be mine. The proposal was to build a family of network workstations for computer-aided design/manufacturing and office automation. UNIX was to be used as a software generator. But he had a hard time understanding UNIX, what good it is and how good it is … Spending a significant amount of time with a popular computer columnist, Miss Yukari Shirota, I compiled this book for him. I found this book generally useful for top executives, managers, planners and office administrators whose background is outside software engineering. Dr.