Operating System

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Operating System

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Gokul Krish

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Operating system - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Operating_system

History
Early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system
features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could automatically run
different programs in succession to speed up processing. Operating systems did not exist in their
modern and more complex forms until the early 1960s.[9] Hardware features were added, that
enabled use of runtime libraries, interrupts, and parallel processing. When personal computers
became popular in the 1980s, operating systems were made for them similar in concept to those used
on larger computers.

In the 1940s, the earliest electronic digital systems had no operating systems. Electronic systems of
this time were programmed on rows of mechanical switches or by jumper wires on plugboards. These
were special-purpose systems that, for example, generated ballistics tables for the military or
controlled the printing of payroll checks from data on punched paper cards. After programmable
general-purpose computers were invented, machine languages (consisting of strings of the binary
digits 0 and 1 on punched paper tape) were introduced that sped up the programming process (Stern,
1981).

In the early 1950s, a computer could execute only one program at

a time. Each user had sole use of the computer for a limited
period and would arrive at a scheduled time with their program
and data on punched paper cards or punched tape. The program
would be loaded into the machine, and the machine would be set
to work until the program completed or crashed. Programs could
generally be debugged via a front panel using toggle switches and
panel lights. It is said that Alan Turing was a master of this on the
early Manchester Mark 1 machine, and he was already deriving
the primitive conception of an operating system from the
principles of the universal Turing machine.[9]

Later machines came with libraries of programs, which would be

linked to a user's program to assist in operations such as input
and output and compiling (generating machine code from
human-readable symbolic code). This was the genesis of the
modern-day operating system. However, machines still ran a OS/360 was used on most IBM
single job at a time. At Cambridge University in England, the job mainframe computers beginning in
queue was at one time a washing line (clothesline) from which 1966, including computers used by
tapes were hung with different colored clothes-pegs to indicate the Apollo program.
job priority.

An improvement was the Atlas Supervisor. Introduced with the Manchester Atlas in 1962, it is
considered by many to be the first recognisable modern operating system.[10] Brinch Hansen
described it as "the most significant breakthrough in the history of operating systems."[11]

Mainframes

Through the 1950s, many major features were pioneered in the field of operating systems on
mainframe computers, including batch processing, input/output interrupting, buffering,
multitasking, spooling, runtime libraries, link-loading, and programs for sorting records in files.

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