The shell called 'ae' started out life with the name 'ash', but someone else used that name for a shell, so I thought I would pick a more interesting name. Old English used a ligature which was made of an 'a' followed by an 'e', with no space between. This ligature is a called an 'ash'. Hence the new name 'ae', which is can be pronounced 'ash' if you choose.
At one time, 'ae' was the default shell for all users ae UNSW/CSE, though around 1990 the default was changed to 'ksh' (and has just recently in July 1999 changed to bash).
Some people got used to some of the features of 'ae' and wanted to keep using them when they moved on, so I made it available for people to download and compile. The source and binaries can be found in my ftp archive and the documentation is browsable here.
The most prominant feature of "ae" is my mind is the way that history editing works. I would say "See the doco.", but I don't seem to have written that bit yet.