The original compiler, written in Small-C for the Intel 8080 by Ron Cain, appeared in the May 1980 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal.
James E. Hendrix improved and extended the original compiler, and wrote The Small-C Handbook.
Ron bootstrapped Small-C on the SRI International PDP 11/45 Unix system with an account provided by John Bass for Small C development.
Porting Small-C requires only that the back-end code generator and the library to operating system interface calls be rewritten for the target processor.
Recognizing the need for improvements, Ron encouraged me to produce a second version, and in December 1982 it also appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal.