Robert L. Patrick and Paul McJones, editors
paul@mcjones.org
http://www.mcjones.org/dustydecks/
Last modified May 7, 2009
The goal of this project is to preserve source code, design documents, and other materials concerning the origins and development of operating systems. This is a project of the Computer History Museum's Software Preservation Group. Comments, suggestions, and donations of additional materials are greatly appreciated.
Thanks to Bob Patrick for his enthusiastic support of this web site, and for contributing the initial articles.
In the early 1950s, the engineering/scientific community in the U.S. quickly embraced the electronic computer because they had a large backlog of applications awaiting digital solution. However, there were two problems: The programming problem and the operations problem. Solutions to reduce the programming effort and increase its quality arose in the form of programming languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL, APL, and more recently C, C++, and Java.
Less well known are the efforts to push more jobs per day through each installed computer system so programs could be developed quicker and more production application programs could be run to produce numbers for analysis, design, and manufacture. To get more jobs per shift through an installed computer, Operating System Software was developed. The first such system was designed at General Motors Research Labs and implemented by personnel from GMR and NAA (North American Aviation) for the IBM 704. It first ran production in 1956 and greatly increased the number of jobs per day a 704 could process. The following first-hand article describes how it came about.
The Direct Couple was an important step in the evolution of large mainframe operating systems which led to OS/360. The series started with the GM-NAA Operating System in 1956, and progressed through SOS, IBSYS, the Direct Couple, and then to the vast OS/360 in 1965.
Examples: Compatible Timesharing System (CTSS), Project Genie, Unix
Examples: Airline Control Program/Transaction Processing Facility (ACP/TPF) for Sabre/PARS airline reservation system
Examples: Tandem NonStop Guardian Operating System
Examples: CP/M, MS-DOS, Macintosh OS, Microsoft Windows
Examples: real-time process control, hypervisors (CP/CMS, etc.)