The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell (computing), or command-line interpreter, for computer operating systems.
The Bourne shell was the default Unix shell of Unix Version 7. Most Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh—which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic link or hard link to a compatible shell—even when other shells are used by most users.
Developed by Stephen Bourne at Bell Labs, it was a replacement for the Thompson shell, whose executable file had the same name—sh. It was released in 1977 in the Version 7 Unix release distributed to colleges and universities. Although it is used as an interactive command interpreter, it was always intended as a scripting language and contains all the features that are commonly considered to produce structured programs.
It gained popularity with the publication of The UNIX Programming Environment by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike—the first commercially published book that presented the shell as a programming language in a tutorial form.
Read more about Bourne Shell: Origins, Features of The Original Version, Features Introduced Past 1979, Criticism, Descendants, Usage, Quotes
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“I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg- shell on the rocks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)