How long does a 100k+ employee company get credit for something a small handful of their employees did almost half a century ago? Not that C wasn't an achievement but . . .

The old monopoly AT&T wasn't just a company but presented itself as an American institution. They heavily publicized their Bell Labs inventions to help keep the anti-trust regulators off their back. Unix/C certainly benefited from this.

I take my point back as the AT&T of today is not the same as it was back then, but the fact that the company funded this research is what makes it admirable.