According to the 1st Edition and 6th Edition manual pages: NAME cat -- concatenate and print See: http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/uni

According to the 1st Edition and 6th Edition manual pages: NAME cat -- concatenate and print See: http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/1/cat http://man.cat-v.org/unix-6th/1/cat I'm pretty sure based on the timeline of pipe (~1973, roughly V4) that the cat command (~1971 V1) predates pipes.