Potted History
(section 1.2)
Prehistory
Babbage (1792-1871). Poor guy never got it to work.
The dawn of History (1945-1955)
Vacuum tubes, plugboards. Programmers got blocks of time, plugged in their
plugboards into the machine. Very simple, computational operations. Everything
in machine language. No Operating Systems.
Transistors (1955-1965)
Batch systems. FMS (Fortran Monitor System) Lots of dubious carrying cards
around. Operators submitting jobs in batches. Oooh, the old days.
The Operator was as important as the 'operating system'.
ICs & multiprogramming (1965-1980)
Multiprogramming - switching between jobs when one was idle. Emphasis
on giving interactive users access to a single machine, via terminals (timesharing).
MULTICS (computer utility). DEC PDP-1 - 1961 - only $120 000! Only 9KB memory!
The dawn of UNIX...
Personal computers (1980-1990)
Large Scale Integration. Workstations. One CPU per person. 'User
friendly' WIMPs (Windows, Icons, Mouse & Pointer/Pulldown-menus). MS-DOS, UNIX, Windows 3.1. The Macintosh! (CBM64, ZX Spectrum) A profusion of competing standards for the Home Computer.
Small LANs in offices, to share printers. WANs to communicate
at distance. Systems must become aware of other computers.
Networks and really personal computers (1990-2000)
Personal computers are more widespread. People have PCs and Macs
in their homes. Multiple PCs and terminals in work.
LANs in work environments.
The Internet. Every computer nowadays has TCP/IP built-in. Sophisticated
windowing environments and user interfaces.
(much) more than one CPU per person. PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), mobile phones.
Operating Systems must cope with other computers, other users,
the network. Still no truly successful distributed operating systems
The Future... (2000--)
Everybody has lots of tiny, cooperating computers. Distributed operating
systems become the norm.
Security and reliability are vital. Idiots and your Granny
use computers all the time.
last updated 6 February 1997