| Lots of great stuff about Multics at that site: https://multicians.org/ Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was a mainframe timesharing operating system begun in 1965 and used until 2000. Multics began as a research project and was an important influence on operating system development. The system became a commercial product sold by Honeywell to education, government, and industry. Multics was a prototype of a Computer Utility, providing secure computing to remote users at their terminals. Multicians still miss the elegant, consistent, and powerful programming environment; some Multics features are only now being added to contemporary systems. Here's the site history of Dockmaster, the National Security Agency's Multics system (which was mentioned in Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg"): https://multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html MIT's Multics systems and Project MAC (Man And Computer): https://multicians.org/site-mit.html The MIT GE-645 was installed in the 9th floor machine room of Project MAC, at 545 Technology Square. (1967) In 1972, a Honeywell 6180 was installed in MIT's building 39, at the Information Processing Services Center. There are publicity pictures of the new machine. The MIT system was upgraded several times and finished as a dual DPS8/70M. https://multicians.org/project-mac.html This article describes MIT's Project MAC, the organization that led the initial creation of Multics. This is not a comprehensive history of Project MAC: my goal is to provide context and motivation for Multics history, and to provide accurate statements and references for deeper investigation. (The author [Tom Van Vleck] was a part-time undergraduate programmer and then a research staff member at Project MAC during its first seven years.) |