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TIme-sharing

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The concept is claimed to have been first described by Robert Dodds in a letter he wrote in 1949 although he did not use the term time-sharing.[1] Later John Backus also described the concept, but did not use the term, in the 1954 summer session at MIT.[2] Bob Bemer used the term time-sharing in his 1957 article "How to consider a computer" in Automatic Control Magazine and it was reported the same year he used the term time-sharing in a presentation.[1][3][4] In a paper published in December 1958, W. F. Bauer wrote that "The computers would handle a number of problems concurrently. Organizations would have input-output equipment installed on their own premises and would buy time on the computer much the same way that the average household buys power and water from utility companies."[5]

Christopher Strachey, who became Oxford University's first professor of computation, filed a patent application in the United Kingdom for "time-sharing" in February 1959.[6][7] He gave a paper "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers"[8] at the first UNESCO Information Processing Conference in Paris in June that year, where he passed the concept on to J. C. R. Licklider.[9] This paper was credited by the MIT Computation Center in 1963 as "the first paper on time-shared computers".[10]

The meaning of the term time-sharing has shifted from its original usage. Up until 1960, time-sharing was used to refer to multiprogramming without multiple user sessions.[1] Later, it came to mean sharing a computer interactively among multiple users. In 1984 Christopher Strachey wrote he considered the change in the meaning of the term time-sharing a source of confusion and not what he meant when he wrote his paper in 1959.[1]

There are also examples of systems which provide multiple user consoles but only for specific applications, they are not general-purpose systems. These include SAGE (1958), SABRE (1960)[1] and PLATO II (1961), created by Donald Bitzer at a public demonstration at Robert Allerton Park near the University of Illinois in early 1961. Bitzer has long said that the PLATO project would have gotten the patent on time-sharing if only the University of Illinois had not lost the patent for two years.[11]

The first interactive, general-purpose time-sharing system usable for software development, Compatible Time-Sharing System, was initiated by John McCarthy at MIT writing a memo in 1959.[12] Fernando J. Corbató led the development of the system, a prototype of which had been produced and tested by November 1961.[13] Philip M. Morse arranged for IBM to provide a series of their mainframe computers starting with the IBM 704 and then the IBM 709 product line IBM 7090 and IBM 7094.[13] IBM loaned those mainframes at no cost to MIT along with the staff to operate them and also provided hardware modifications mostly in the form of RPQs as prior customers had already commissioned the modifications.[14][13] There were certain stipulations that governed MIT's use of the loaned IBM hardware. MIT could not charge for use of CTSS.[15] MIT could only use the IBM computers for eight hours a day; another eight hours were available for other colleges and universities; IBM could use their computers for the remaining eight hours, although there were some exceptions. In 1963 a second deployment of CTSS was installed on an IBM 7094 that MIT has purchased using ARPA money. This was used to support Multics development at Project MAC.[13]

JOSS began time-sharing service in January 1964.[16] Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS) began service in March 1964.[17]

See also

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Pelkey, James L. (1995). The History of Computer Communications. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Archived from the original on June 14, 2025.

Davies, D. W. (June 1966). Proposal for a Digital Communication Network (PDF) (Report). United Kingdom: National Physical Laboratory. Archived from the original on August 5, 2002.

"G. David Forney, Jr., an oral history conducted in 1995 by Andrew Goldstein". Engineering and Technology History Wiki. United States: United Engineering Foundation. Archived from the original on April 19, 2025. Retrieved July 11, 2025.

Kline, R. R. (2019). "The Modem that Still Connects Us". In Aspray, W. (ed.). Historical Studies in Computing, Information, and Society: Insights from the Flatiron Lectures. History of Computing. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. p. 29—50. ISBN 978-3-030-18955-6. Retrieved July 11, 2025.

John McCarthy (1983). "Reminiscences on the History of Time Sharing". Stanford University.

Lee, J.A.N. (1992). "Claims to the term 'time-sharing'". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 14 (1): 16–54. doi:10.1109/85.145316. S2CID 30976386.</ref>

Bemer, Bob (March 1957). "Origins of Timesharing". bobbemer.com. Archived from the original on 2017-07-02. Retrieved June 24, 2016.

"Computer Pioneers - Christopher Strachey". history.computer.org. Retrieved 2020-01-23. What Strachey proposed in his concept of time-sharing was an arrangement that would preserve the direct contact between programmer and machine, while still achieving the economy of multiprogramming.

Strachey, Christopher (1959-06-15). Time sharing in large fast computers. UNESCO Information Processing conference. Retrieved 30 May 2023.

Gillies, James M.; Gillies, James; Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-19-286207-5.

  1. ^ a b c d e Lee, J.A.N. (1992). "Claims to the term 'time-sharing'". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 14 (1): 16–54. doi:10.1109/85.145316. S2CID 30976386.
  2. ^ Backus, John, Digital Computers: Advanced Coding Techniques Archived 2022-08-06 at the Wayback Machine, MIT 1954, page 16-2. The first known description of computer time-sharing.
  3. ^ Bemer, Bob (March 1957). "Origins of Timesharing". bobbemer.com. Archived from the original on 2017-07-02. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
  4. ^ Middleburg, C.A. (2010). "Searching Publications on Operating Systems". arXiv:1003.5525 [cs.OS].
  5. ^ Bauer, W. F. (December 1958). Computer design from the programmer's viewpoint] (PDF). Eastern Joint Computer Conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-07-23. One of the first descriptions of computer time-sharing.
  6. ^ "Computer Pioneers - Christopher Strachey". history.computer.org. Retrieved 2020-01-23. What Strachey proposed in his concept of time-sharing was an arrangement that would preserve the direct contact between programmer and machine, while still achieving the economy of multiprogramming.
  7. ^ "Computer - Time-sharing and minicomputers". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-01-23. In 1959 Christopher Strachey in the United Kingdom and John McCarthy in the United States independently described something they called time-sharing.
  8. ^ Strachey, Christopher (1959-06-15). Time sharing in large fast computers. UNESCO Information Processing conference. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  9. ^ Gillies, James M.; Gillies, James; Gillies, James; Cailliau, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-19-286207-5.
  10. ^ F. J. Corbató, et al., The Compatible Time-Sharing System A Programmer's Guide (MIT Press, 1963) ISBN 978-0-262-03008-3. "To establish the context of the present work, it is informative to trace the development of time-sharing at MIT. Shortly after the first paper on time-shared computers by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing conference, H.M. Teager and J. McCarthy delivered an unpublished paper "Time-Shared Program Testing" at the August 1959 ACM Meeting."
  11. ^ Brian Dear, Chapter 4 -- The Diagram, The Friendly Orange Glow, Pantheon Books, New York, 2017; pages 71-72 discuss the development of time-sharing and the University of Illinois loss of the patent.
  12. ^ "Reminiscences on the Theory of Time-Sharing". John McCarthy's Original Website. Retrieved 2020-01-23. in 1960 'time-sharing' as a phrase was much in the air. It was, however, generally used in my sense rather than in John McCarthy's sense of a CTSS-like object.
  13. ^ a b c d Walden, David; Van Vleck, Tom, eds. (2011). "Compatible Time-Sharing System (1961-1973): Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Overview" (PDF). IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  14. ^ Watson Jr., Thomas J. (1990). Father, Son, and Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. New York: Bantam Books. p. 244-245. ISBN 9780553070118. When we started delivering our first commercial machines, our customers often found that the most difficult thing about having a computer was finding somebody who could run it. We couldn't produce all those technicians ourselves. Yet there was not a single university with a computer curriculum. So I went up to MIT in the mid-1950s and urged them to start training computer scientists. We made a gift of a large computer and the money to run it.
  15. ^ Lee, J.A.N.; Rosin, Robert F (1992). "Time-Sharing at MIT". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 14 (1): 18. doi:10.1109/85.145317. S2CID 30631012. Retrieved October 3, 2022. Corbato: No, that was one of the interesting aspects. One of the terms of IBM's donation for the use of the equipment was that we were not to charge for it. It was free all right.
  16. ^ J. C. Shaw (1964). "JOSS: a designer's view of an experimental on-line computing system". Proceeding AFIPS '64 (Fall, part I) Proceedings of the October 27-29, 1964, fall joint computer conference, part I. pp. 455–464. doi:10.1145/1464052.1464093. ISBN 9781450378895. S2CID 16483923. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  17. ^ Rankin, Joy Lisi (2018), A People's History of Computing in the United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, ISBN 9780674970977
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