[명경백]

제가 답변을 1979년으로 했었는데, 잘못된 정보를 말한 것 같아서 정정합니다.
c는 1972년에 활성화(?)되고 K&R C 책이 1978년에 나왔네요.

The initial development of C occurred at AT&T Bell Labs between 1969 and 1973;[2] according to Ritchie, the most creative period occurred in 1972. It was named "C" because its features were derived from an earlier language called "B", which according to Ken Thompson was a stripped-down version of the BCPL programming language

...
In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C Programming Language. This book, known to C programmers as "K&R", served for many years as an informal specification of the language

출처: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)