23 Aug
2026
23 Aug
'26
12:47 a.m.
Hey gang, a few months ago I presented about timeshare and some aspects
about operating systems since the 1950s.
To buzz through a PDF or PPT version of the notes:
https://github.com/voidstar78/VCF2026
VCFSW has the talk archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE235ti9XQ
Sorry being a bit dull as a speaker, but a few highlights:
- overview of Douglass Ross "Director Tape" for Whirlwind (only "what it
looked like" evidence that I was ever able to find, would be curious if
others knew more about it)
- 1965 Honeywell ADMIRAL OS: while I couldn't find much info about that
specific OS, what I did find what Honeywell went to bat for us all vs RAND
corp, putting an end some concerns about ENIAC hardware patents (that's a
very short version of it)
- today we fight about \ vs / slashes, when MULTICS split the difference
and used > (greater than symbol), at least as far as I could tell from the
manuals
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally called UNICS (see
footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but "verified" in
the past year
- I made a claim that Datapoint CTOS (1972) was the only OS ever on a
cassette tape (not to be confused with the late 1970s CTOS) - that said, I
suppose the MCM/70 did as well; really admires Mattis Lind's work on the
DP2200
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
Tons of other OS's, obviously couldn't cover them all in a VCF talk. But
there are a bunch of addendum notes after the end of the slides:
- Mike Muuss ENIAC archive (at a .mil ftp if anyone wants to archive it
more properly?)
- I still claim that the word "operating system" was never used before
1960; the "SOS" or "share OS" was a name applied later (1962ish) to
those
pre-1960s concepts [ afaik ]
- I couldn't fit in a bit about squozed :) really wanted to, just couldn't
make it fit
- AOSP, EXEC II, IBM 1800 derivatives (anyone ever see one of these in
the wild?),
Oh, not officially launched yet, but I'm now self hosting oldsayings.info
(with a telnet front-end at port 42525). Kicking around some ideas, but
it's reliably staying up now with Starlink as the ISP. I got tired of
waiting for fiber - but the county workers are getting closer, I see them
running it ranch by ranch.
Cheers, wish could have made it to VCF West this year.
-Steve
23 Aug
23 Aug
9:02 p.m.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 2:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally
called UNICS (see
footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but "verified" in
the past year
How was this verified? When I tried to find contemporary documentation
I couldn't find any and Ken Thompson said that it went directly from 'Ken's
New System" to Unix without 'unics' when I emailed him in 2020 before my
history of unix talk at FOSDEM. At the time, I could just find third-hand
stories about the "unics" story.
There's no footnotes in the pdf and I can't open the ppt file, so I'm
curious
what you've found.
Warner
11:07 p.m.
Warner,
(slide 24 in the PPT)
https://www.reddit.com/r/unix/comments/1t826y8/emailed_ken_thompson_about_t…
Not the most assuring source, but it is from earlier this year and
apparently directly from Ken. But my interpretation is this spelling was
never actually written down or even typed, just an in-house office
reference for maybe hours/days at most. Ken himself may have never used
this, he refers to bwk.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2026 at 12:02 AM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 2:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of)
originally called UNICS (see
footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but "verified" in
the past year
How was this verified? When I tried to find contemporary documentation
I couldn't find any and Ken Thompson said that it went directly from 'Ken's
New System" to Unix without 'unics' when I emailed him in 2020 before my
history of unix talk at FOSDEM. At the time, I could just find third-hand
stories about the "unics" story.
There's no footnotes in the pdf and I can't open the ppt file, so I'm
curious
what you've found.
Warner
24 Aug
24 Aug
10:38 a.m.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 4:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
Sorry, I should probably look through the preso before replying, but are
you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc. (with an
'e')?
KJ
7:09 p.m.
Hmm, I hadn't ever heard of anything referred to as "Tymnet." The
product I came across was (I believe) a follow on or derivative of BTS (SDS
940), starting c. 1967 Tymeshare (with a y). I had assumed it was
US-based, but possibly am mistaken.
-Steve
On Mon, Aug 24, 2026 at 1:38 PM Ken Seefried <seefriek(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 4:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
Sorry, I should probably look through the preso before replying, but are
you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc. (with an
'e')?
KJ
7:14 p.m.
On Mon, 2026-08-24 at 22:09 -0500, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
Hmm, I hadn't ever heard of anything referred to
as "Tymnet." The
product I came across was (I believe) a follow on or derivative of
BTS (SDS
940), starting c. 1967 Tymeshare (with a y). I had assumed it was
US-based, but possibly am mistaken.
I did a little bit of digging and found this:
Tymshare was an independent computer time-sharing company founded in
1964 by Tom O'Rourke and Dave Schmidt, former engineers from General
Electric. Tymnet was developed later as a proprietary packet-switched
data communications network built and operated by Tymshare itself. [1
[1], 2 [2], 3 [3]]
I had thought they were maybe CDC-based, but there were based on SDS
(formerly GE?) 940 and DEC PDP-10.
— Van
-Steve
On Mon, Aug 24, 2026 at 1:38 PM Ken Seefried <seefriek(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 4:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late
> > 1960s kind
> > of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system,
> > maybe for
> > inventory or check-processing?).
> >
> >
> >
> Sorry, I should probably look through the preso before replying,
> but are
> you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc.
> (with an
> 'e')?
>
> KJ
>
[1] 1
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe-computers/7/181
[2] 2 https://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/t-z/tymshare-inc/
[3] 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet
8:03 p.m.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2026, at 3:14 AM, Van Snyder via cctalk wrote:
--
Daniel Moniz <dnm(a)pobox.com>
On Mon, 2026-08-24 at 22:09 -0500, Steve Lewis via
cctalk wrote:
Norm Hardy has a number of pages on Tymshare and Tymnet from his time (ahem) there, this
page is a decent single entry point to spider out from (see the second paragraph):
http://www.cap-lore.com/Past.html
Hmm, I hadn't ever heard of anything referred
to as "Tymnet." The
product I came across was (I believe) a follow on or derivative of
BTS (SDS
940), starting c. 1967 Tymeshare (with a y). I had assumed it was
US-based, but possibly am mistaken.
I did a little bit of digging and found this:
Tymshare was an independent computer time-sharing company founded in
1964 by Tom O'Rourke and Dave Schmidt, former engineers from General
Electric. Tymnet was developed later as a proprietary packet-switched
data communications network built and operated by Tymshare itself. [1
[1], 2 [2], 3 [3]]
I had thought they were maybe CDC-based, but there were based on SDS
(formerly GE?) 940 and DEC PDP-10. On Mon, Aug
24, 2026 at 1:38 PM Ken Seefried <seefriek(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 4:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late
> > 1960s kind
> > of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system,
> > maybe for
> > inventory or check-processing?).
> >
> >
> >
> Sorry, I should probably look through the preso before replying,
> but are
> you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc.
> (with an
> 'e')?
>
> KJ
>
[1] 1
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe-computers/7/181
[2] 2 https://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/t-z/tymshare-inc/
[3] 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet 
10:05 p.m.
Van Snyder wrote:
Steve Lewis wrote:
> Ken Seefried wrote:
>> Steve Lewis wrote:
>>> I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late
>>> 1960s kind of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange"
>>> system, maybe for inventory or check-processing?).
You can find lots of information Tymshare and Tymnet in the book
"The Tym Before" by Nathan Gregory.
https://www.nathangregoryauthor.com/tym-before
>> Sorry, I should probably look through the
preso before replying, but
>> are you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc.
>> (with an 'e')?
Tymnet was an outgrowth of Tymshare (without an e), initally to support
their network of timesharing computers. The timesharing busieness wound
down, but the network remained.
> Hmm, I hadn't ever heard of anything referred
to as "Tymnet." The
> product I came across was (I believe) a follow on or derivative of
> BTS (SDS 940), starting c. 1967 Tymeshare (with a y). I had assumed
> it was US-based, but possibly am mistaken.
Tymnet at some point ended up in the hands of British Telecom.
Tymshare was an independent computer time-sharing
company [...]
I had thought they were maybe CDC-based, but there were based on SDS
(formerly GE?) 940 and DEC PDP-10.
Nothing to do with GE. SDS was bought by Xerox and became XDS.
Tymshare started on SDS 940 computers. They got the timesharing system
from Berkeley's Project Genie and developed it further, calling it
TYMCOM. They bought the Computer Center Corporation which ran on PDP-10
computers. Tymshare ported over some of their stuff to the 10 and
called the system TYMCOM-X; the earlier 940 system was now called
TYMCOM-IX. They also had IBM mainframes.
8:22 p.m.
was the Pitney-Bowes 440/Raytheon 520 the only computer to have an
operating system on high speed bidirectional paper tape?
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On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 3:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hey gang, a few months ago I presented about timeshare and some aspects
about operating systems since the 1950s.
To buzz through a PDF or PPT version of the notes:
https://github.com/voidstar78/VCF2026
VCFSW has the talk archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE235ti9XQ
Sorry being a bit dull as a speaker, but a few highlights:
- overview of Douglass Ross "Director Tape" for Whirlwind (only "what it
looked like" evidence that I was ever able to find, would be curious if
others knew more about it)
- 1965 Honeywell ADMIRAL OS: while I couldn't find much info about that
specific OS, what I did find what Honeywell went to bat for us all vs RAND
corp, putting an end some concerns about ENIAC hardware patents (that's a
very short version of it)
- today we fight about \ vs / slashes, when MULTICS split the difference
and used > (greater than symbol), at least as far as I could tell from the
manuals
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally called UNICS (see
footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but "verified" in
the past year
- I made a claim that Datapoint CTOS (1972) was the only OS ever on a
cassette tape (not to be confused with the late 1970s CTOS) - that said, I
suppose the MCM/70 did as well; really admires Mattis Lind's work on the
DP2200
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
Tons of other OS's, obviously couldn't cover them all in a VCF talk. But
there are a bunch of addendum notes after the end of the slides:
- Mike Muuss ENIAC archive (at a .mil ftp if anyone wants to archive it
more properly?)
- I still claim that the word "operating system" was never used before
1960; the "SOS" or "share OS" was a name applied later (1962ish) to
those
pre-1960s concepts [ afaik ]
- I couldn't fit in a bit about squozed :) really wanted to, just couldn't
make it fit
- AOSP, EXEC II, IBM 1800 derivatives (anyone ever see one of these in
the wild?),
Oh, not officially launched yet, but I'm now self hosting oldsayings.info
(with a telnet front-end at port 42525). Kicking around some ideas, but
it's reliably staying up now with Starlink as the ISP. I got tired of
waiting for fiber - but the county workers are getting closer, I see them
running it ranch by ranch.
Cheers, wish could have made it to VCF West this year.
-Steve
--
--Carey
25 Aug
25 Aug
10:02 a.m.
Steve et al.
I'm not exactly sure how it fits into this discussion, but you ought to take a look at
the Lockheed MIS system, which is now an IEEE milestone at:
https://ethw.org/Milestones: Pioneering_Medical_Information_System,_1965-1974
Its prototype began in 1966 and was fully operational by 1968, running at the Mayo Clinic
on an SDS-92 and operating about five terminals and several printers. It was then ported
to an IBM/360 M40 and was in production on an IBM S/370 M155 about 1972.
Essentially, MIS software was a transaction processing supervisor that took over control
of the hardware and turned it into a multi-processing transaction processor which by the
mid-70s was in production servicing four different hospitals with hundreds of terminals.
A block diagram of the system architecture is on sheet 52 of this document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GogbWimvoNvh2n1550Qxa0wmHVDtZWVM/view?usp=…. As it
says, "This software is organized in three basic groups—each of which operates
relatively independently from the others on a time-shared basis—and communicates with the
others by passing messages back and forth." In the IBM DOS era, DOS was just one of
the three "basic groups" with the others being a terminal handling group and a
transaction processor. How they managed to run it on later IBM OSs is a bit of a mystery,
but it ran on IBM mainframes until 2020!
It died this century, mainly because management never extended its capability into the
physician's office.
From a UX perspective, it was renowned for its response time and ease of use, and most
current users familiar with MIS say its performance still isn't matched by today's
medical informatics systems.
tom
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 3:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Hey gang, a few months ago I presented about timeshare and some
aspects about operating systems since the 1950s.
To buzz through a PDF or PPT version of the notes:
https://github.com/voidstar78/VCF2026
VCFSW has the talk archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE235ti9XQ
Sorry being a bit dull as a speaker, but a few highlights:
- overview of Douglass Ross "Director Tape" for Whirlwind (only "what
it looked like" evidence that I was ever able to find, would be
curious if others knew more about it)
- 1965 Honeywell ADMIRAL OS: while I couldn't find much info about
that specific OS, what I did find what Honeywell went to bat for us
all vs RAND corp, putting an end some concerns about ENIAC hardware
patents (that's a very short version of it)
- today we fight about \ vs / slashes, when MULTICS split the
difference and used > (greater than symbol), at least as far as I
could tell from the manuals
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally called UNICS
(see footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but
"verified" in the past year
- I made a claim that Datapoint CTOS (1972) was the only OS ever on a
cassette tape (not to be confused with the late 1970s CTOS) - that
said, I suppose the MCM/70 did as well; really admires Mattis Lind's
work on the
DP2200
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s
kind of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system,
maybe for inventory or check-processing?).
Tons of other OS's, obviously couldn't cover them all in a VCF talk.
But there are a bunch of addendum notes after the end of the slides:
- Mike Muuss ENIAC archive (at a .mil ftp if anyone wants to archive
it more properly?)
- I still claim that the word "operating system" was never used before
1960; the "SOS" or "share OS" was a name applied later (1962ish) to
those pre-1960s concepts [ afaik ]
- I couldn't fit in a bit about squozed :) really wanted to, just
couldn't make it fit
- AOSP, EXEC II, IBM 1800 derivatives (anyone ever see one of these
in the wild?),
Oh, not officially launched yet, but I'm now self hosting oldsayings.info
(with a telnet front-end at port 42525). Kicking around some ideas,
but it's reliably staying up now with Starlink as the ISP. I got
tired of waiting for fiber - but the county workers are getting
closer, I see them running it ranch by ranch.
Cheers, wish could have made it to VCF West this year.
-Steve
--
--Carey
6:24 a.m.
Are you aware of the paper tap operating system on the Pitney Bowes
440/Raytheon 520 computer? a high speed biderectinal paper tape
reader with teels like tape and a monitor to load programs and reload
itself after a job. sork could be accpeted on card reader or console.
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On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 3:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hey gang, a few months ago I presented about timeshare and some aspects
about operating systems since the 1950s.
To buzz through a PDF or PPT version of the notes:
https://github.com/voidstar78/VCF2026
VCFSW has the talk archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE235ti9XQ
Sorry being a bit dull as a speaker, but a few highlights:
- overview of Douglass Ross "Director Tape" for Whirlwind (only "what it
looked like" evidence that I was ever able to find, would be curious if
others knew more about it)
- 1965 Honeywell ADMIRAL OS: while I couldn't find much info about that
specific OS, what I did find what Honeywell went to bat for us all vs RAND
corp, putting an end some concerns about ENIAC hardware patents (that's a
very short version of it)
- today we fight about \ vs / slashes, when MULTICS split the difference
and used > (greater than symbol), at least as far as I could tell from the
manuals
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally called UNICS (see
footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but "verified" in
the past year
- I made a claim that Datapoint CTOS (1972) was the only OS ever on a
cassette tape (not to be confused with the late 1970s CTOS) - that said, I
suppose the MCM/70 did as well; really admires Mattis Lind's work on the
DP2200
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s kind
of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system, maybe for
inventory or check-processing?).
Tons of other OS's, obviously couldn't cover them all in a VCF talk. But
there are a bunch of addendum notes after the end of the slides:
- Mike Muuss ENIAC archive (at a .mil ftp if anyone wants to archive it
more properly?)
- I still claim that the word "operating system" was never used before
1960; the "SOS" or "share OS" was a name applied later (1962ish) to
those
pre-1960s concepts [ afaik ]
- I couldn't fit in a bit about squozed :) really wanted to, just couldn't
make it fit
- AOSP, EXEC II, IBM 1800 derivatives (anyone ever see one of these in
the wild?),
Oh, not officially launched yet, but I'm now self hosting oldsayings.info
(with a telnet front-end at port 42525). Kicking around some ideas, but
it's reliably staying up now with Starlink as the ISP. I got tired of
waiting for fiber - but the county workers are getting closer, I see them
running it ranch by ranch.
Cheers, wish could have made it to VCF West this year.
-Steve
--
--Carey
1
days inactive
3
days old
10 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Carey Schug -
Daniel Moniz -
Ken Seefried -
Lars Brinkhoff -
Steve Lewis -
Tom Gardner -
Van Snyder -
Warner Losh