I am glad to have found the following in the CSRG Archive CD-ROMs.
The following was released under the licenses of BSD and Caldera.

Here are extracts from 4.2BSD /usr/src/sys/sys/kern_exec.c (link to TUHS Unix Tree)

(emphasis concerning the issue whether a blank after #! is required)

/*	kern_exec.c	6.2	83/08/23	*/

[...]

execve()
{

[...]

	/*
	 * Read in first few bytes of file for segment sizes, ux_mag:
	 *	407 = plain executable
	 *	410 = RO text
	 *	413 = demand paged RO text
	 * Also an ASCII line beginning with #! is
	 * the file name of a ``shell'' and arguments may be prepended
	 * to the argument list if given here.
	 *
	 * SHELL NAMES ARE LIMITED IN LENGTH.
	 *
	 * ONLY ONE ARGUMENT MAY BE PASSED TO THE SHELL FROM
	 * THE ASCII LINE.
	 */

[...]

	switch (u.u_exdata.ux_mag) {

[...]

            default:
                if (u.u_exdata.ux_shell[0] != '#' ||
		    u.u_exdata.ux_shell[1] != '!' ||
		    indir) {
			u.u_error = ENOEXEC;
			goto bad;
		}
		cp = &u.u_exdata.ux_shell[2];		/* skip "#!" */
		while (cp < &u.u_exdata.ux_shell[SHSIZE]) {
			if (*cp == '\t')
				*cp = ' ';
			else if (*cp == '\n') {
				*cp = '\0';
				break;
			}
			cp++;
		}
		if (*cp != '\0') {
			u.u_error = ENOEXEC;
			goto bad;
		}
		cp = &u.u_exdata.ux_shell[2];
		while (*cp == ' ')
			cp++;
		u.u_dirp = cp;
		while (*cp && *cp != ' ')
			cp++;
		sharg = NULL;
		if (*cp) {
			*cp++ = '\0';
			while (*cp == ' ')
				cp++;
			if (*cp) {
				bcopy((caddr_t)cp, (caddr_t)cfarg, SHSIZE);
				sharg = cfarg;
			}
		}

[...]