The story starts somewhere around CPL, Common Programming Language, which Martin Richards, University of Cambridge, turned into Basic Combined Programming Language, BCPL. This was essentially a type-less language which allowed the user direct access to the computer memory. This made it useful to system programmers.
Ken Thompson at Bell Labs, USA, wrote his own variant of this and called it B. In due course the designers of Unix modified this to produce C (being the next letter of BCPL:hence any successor should be called P, not D!). (Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs, early 70's) Unix was re-written entirely in C. C differs from BCPL in having a type system, but is still clearly close in spirit as the typing is only weakly applied.
The big gain for Unix is that it became realtively portable across different makes of machine: all you needed was a C compiler. Unix thus broke the mould of computer suppliers offering only their own operating systems.
Since then, an ANSI standard for C has emerged, consolidating its international acceptance.
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