Early+Operating+Systems

Before computers had operating systems the user had sole use of the computer. The user would have the program and the data that was usually on punched paper and tape. Then the program would be loaded into the computer and it would run until it completed the program or crashed. Later computers came with libraries of support code, which was linked to the user's program to assist in operations such as input and output. This was the beginning of the operating system. The Mainframe era It is speculated that the first operating systems used for real work was the GM-NAA I/O. Other early operating systems were produced by customers for the IBM mainframes. Early operating systems were very diverse. Every operating system, even ones from the same vendor, could have radically different models of commands, operating procedures, and other facilities such as debugging aids. Until the 1960s when IBM stopped work on existing operating systems and put all effort into developing the System/360. Which was a series of computers that all used the same instruction architecture. IBM intended to develop a single operating system for the new hardware OS/360, but had many problems during the devolopment and had to release a whole family of operating systems instead of just one. Later in the 60s and into the 70s Control Data Corporation in cooperation with the University of Minnesota the SCOPE, KRONOS, and NOS were created supporting batch and timesharing use. In the late 70s, Control Data and the University of Illinois developed the PLATO system. The system was remarkarbly innovative with the TUTOR programming language which allowed applications such as real-time chat and multi-user graphical games.

UNIX The UNIX operating system was developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories. The portability of the new system because of it's high level C language it became the choice for minicomputer and workstations.