---
title: "S at 50"
author: "Martyn Plummer"
date: 2026-05-05
categories: ["History"]
tags: ["anniversary"]

---


Today marks 50 years since Rick Becker and John Chambers presented a new project to a few of their colleagues in Statistics and Data Analysis research at Bell Labs. John writes:

> It had no name and we were unsure what it was, exactly.  A few months later it was named S, initially called an interactive environment.  Only a revised version was referred to as a language.  (Lately I’ve been labelling it R Version 0.)

A poster by Balasubramanian Narasimhan summarizes 50 years of S and R. You can [download](../../../../post/S-at-50/s_at_50_poster.jpg) the full size poster or open up the image below in a new tab to see it full size.

<img src="../../../../post/S-at-50/s_at_50_poster.jpg" width="540" height="720" />
