1956, GM-NAA I/O: Developed by Robert L. Patrick of General Motors for use on their IBM 704 mainframe. This early OS was primarily designed to automatically switch to the next job once its current job was completed. It was used on about forty IBM 704 mainframes.
THE HISTORY OF OPERATING SYSTEMS
A short time-line about some of the most noteworthy OS's
1961, MCP (Master Control Program): Developed by Burroughs Corporations for their B5000 mainframe. MCP is still in used today by the Unisys ClearPath/MCP machines.
1966, DOS/360: After years of being strictly in the hardware business, IBM ventured into the OS. IBM developed a few unsuccessful mainframe Operating Systems until it finally released DOS/360 and its successors, which put IBM in the driver seat for both the hardware and OS industries.
1969, Unix: Developed by AT&T Bell Labs programmers Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. It gained widespread acceptance first within the large AT&T company, and later by colleges and universities. It is written in C, which allows for easier modification, acceptance, and portability.
1973, CP/M (Control Program/Monitor (later re-purposed as “Control Program for Microcomputers”): Developed by Greg Kildall as a side project for his company Digital Research. CP/M became a popular OS in the 1970′s. It had many applications developed for it, including WordStar and dBASE. It was ported to a variety of hardware environments. In fact, IBM originally wanted CP/M for its new Personal Computers, but later selected MS-DOS when a deal could not be reached.
1977, BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution): Developed by the University of California, Berkeley. BSD is a Unix variant based on early versions of Unix from Bell Labs.
BSD Logo
1981, MS-DOS: Developed by Microsoft for the IBM PC’s. It was the first widely available Operating Systems for home users. In 1985, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, which popularized the Operating System even more. Microsoft Windows allowed users a graphical user interface (GUI), which rapidly spread Microsoft’s product.
1982, SunOS: Developed by Sun Microsystems, SunOS was based on BSD. It was a very popular Unix variant.
1984, Mac OS: Developed by Apple Computer, Inc for their new product, the Macintosh home PC. The Macintosh was widely advertised (the famous 1984 commercial is available below). Mac OS was the first OS with a GUI built-in. This lead to a very stable OS, as well as wide acceptance due to its ease of use.
1987, OS/2: Developed by a joint venture of IBM and Microsoft. Though the OS was heavily marketed, it did not pick up in popularity.
1991, Linux: Developed by Linus Torvalds as a free Unix variant. Linux today is a very largely contributed Open Source project that plays a very prominent role in today’s server industry.
1992, Sun Solaris: Developed by Sun Microsystems, Solaris is a widely used Unix variant, and partially developed based on Sun’s SunOS.
1993, Windows NT: Developed by Microsoft as a high-end server Operating System, the NT code became the basis for Operating Systems to this day. NT was primarily used on computers used as servers to counter the Unix dominance in the arena.
