From: John Day <jeanjour(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net>
Multics was based on EBCDIC which had a New Line (NL) character but
no CR or LF. The ARPANET went with the ASCII standard. But I never
forgave the ANSI committee for taking left arrow out of the character
set (as a replacement operator).
Which suggests that the reason Unix used LF as newline was because
Unix was consciously based on Multics, and Multics had a newline but
no carriage return or line feed.
Dale