Little bit of abridged history in this article from Arstechnica (https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/12/a-damn-stupid-thing-to-do-the-origins-of-c/). It’s interesting in that you can see why so many common technical aphorisms exist, like the principle of least astonishment

Only two years after EDSAC 2 came online, the university realized that a far more powerful machine would be required soon, and in order to achieve this, they would need to purchase a commercial mainframe. The university considered both the IBM 7090 and the Ferranti Atlas, but it could afford neither of them. In 1961, Peter Hall, a division manager at Ferranti, suggested that they could develop a stripped-down version of the Atlas computer jointly with Cambridge University. Cambridge would get the prototype, dubbed “Titan,” and Ferranti would be able to market the new computer to customers who couldn’t afford the Atlas system.

In order to provide computing services to the rest of the university, this new computer would need both an operating system and at least one high-level programming language.

There was little thought given to expanding the language that had been developed for EDSAC 2. “In the early 1960s, it was common to think, ‘We are building a new computer, so we need a new programming language,’” David Hartley recalled in a 2017 podcast. Along with David Wheeler and David Barron, Hartley would be involved in the early development of this new computer’s programming language.

“The new operating system was inevitable,” according to Hartley, but a new programming language was not. “We thought this was an opportunity to have fun with a new language—which, in hindsight, was a damn stupid thing to do.”

This exemplifies the saying ‘The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good‘:

The group started off with the specifications of ALGOL 60, with the goal of writing a “perfect” language: one that would be practical for a variety of users but also aesthetically satisfying and efficient.

Almost immediately, they had some difficulty prioritizing, as David Barron noted of Strachey, “It was characteristic of him to insist on minor points of difference with the same force that he insisted on major points.” One minor quibble was Strachey’s objection to the grammar of “IF … THEN … ELSE” statements. “I cannot allow my name to be associated with a definite recommendation to use ignorantly incorrect English,” was his view, as Hartley later wrote for Annals of the History of Computing. Strachey preferred “OR,” which conflicted with the way “OR” was used in nearly every other programming language in existence. Nonetheless, his preferences carried the day, and the CPL reference manual included “OR” in the place where users would have expected “ELSE.”

In the end, C was good enough for what it was needed for. Better is always a relative term.