COMPATIBLE TIME-SHARING SYSTEM (CTSS)

July 14, 2019

Fernando Corbató, whose work on Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in the 1960s helped pave the way for the personal computer, as well as the computer password, died at the age of 93.

About:

Meaning: Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) allowed multiple users in different locations to access a single computer simultaneously through telephone lines.
Compatible means that it could simulate the Fortran Monitor System, the batch OS previously run on the IBM 7090 and IBM 7094 mainframe computers on which CTSS ran.
Time sharing means the system can allocate resources for two tasks or processes at once. This was a major advance, since earlier mainframes and computer systems only worked on one process at a time, in a linear fashion.
Development: The Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS) was developed at the MIT Computation Center in the 1960s and 1970s.
Impact:
- The design of the CTSS represents the beginning of the idea that operating systems can work on multiple threads or “multitask.”
- Eventually, designs like CTSS gave way to more modern MS-DOS systems in the 1980s and on to modern Windows and OSx systems in use today.