C is a programming language that was developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. It was designed to be a high-level language that was easy to use, yet still able to provide the low-level access to system resources that was needed to develop operating systems and other system software.

C was influenced by earlier programming languages such as BCPL and B, and it was designed to be more efficient and flexible than these languages. C was first used to develop the Unix operating system, and it quickly became a popular choice for developing system software and applications.

In the 1980s, C was standardized by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and it became widely used in a variety of applications, including scientific computing, business software, and games.

In the 1990s, C++, an extension of C that added object-oriented programming features, became popular, and C#, a programming language based on C, was developed by Microsoft. Today, C is still widely used and is considered a foundational language for many other programming languages.