PKZIP
Overview
 
PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz
Phil Katz
Phillip Walter Katz was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the zip file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS.- Career :...

 and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE
PKWARE, Inc
PKWARE, Inc. was founded in 1986 by Phil Katz, co-inventor of the ZIP standard. PKWARE provides data-centric security solutions across all major computing platforms, and is known for its data compression and file management solutions...

 stands for "Phil Katz".
File compression routines date back to at least the 1960s: IBM had a compression program called SQUOZE that was commonly used to pack programs on the 709
IBM 709
The IBM 709 was an early computer system introduced by IBM in August, 1958. It was an improved version of the IBM 704 and the second member of the IBM 700/7000 series of scientific computers....

 and 7090
IBM 7090
The IBM 7090 was a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 was the third member of the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers. The first 7090 installation...

 mainframes as part of the SHARE operating system
SHARE Operating System
The SHARE Operating System, also known as SOS, was created in 1959 as an improvement on the General Motors GM-NAA I/O operating system, the first operating system, by the SHARE user group...

.

By the 1970s file archiving programs were distributed as standard utilities with operating systems. They include the Unix utilities ar, shar, and tar
Tar (file format)
In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...

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