The evolution of operating systems is
directly dependent on the development of computer systems and how users use
them. Here is a quick tour of computing systems through the past fifty years in
the timeline.
Early
Evolution
·
1945: ENIAC, Moore School
of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania.
·
1949: EDSAC and EDVAC
·
1949: BINAC - a
successor to the ENIAC
·
1951: UNIVAC by
Remington
·
1952: IBM 701
·
1956: The interrupt
·
1954-1957: FORTRAN was
developed
Operating
Systems - Late 1950s
By the late 1950s Operating systems
were well improved and started supporting following usages:
·
It was able to perform Single
stream batch processing.
·
It could use Common, standardized,
input/output routines for device access.
·
Program transition capabilities to
reduce the overhead of starting a new job was added.
·
Error recovery to clean up after a job terminated abnormally was
added.
·
Job control languages that allowed
users to specify the job definition and resource requirements were made
possible.
Operating
Systems - In 1960s
·
1961: The dawn of minicomputers
·
1962: Compatible Time-Sharing System
(CTSS) from MIT
·
1963: Burroughs Master Control Program
(MCP) for the B5000 system
·
1964: IBM System/360
·
1960s: Disks became mainstream
·
1966: Minicomputers got cheaper, more
powerful, and really useful.
·
1967-1968: Mouse was
invented.
·
1964 and onward: Multics
·
1969: The UNIX Time-Sharing System from
Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Supported
OS Features by 1970s
·
Multi User and Multi tasking was introduced.
·
Dynamic address translation hardware and Virtual machines came
into picture.
·
Modular
architectures came into existence.
·
Personal, interactive systems came into
existence.
Accomplishments
after 1970
·
1971: Intel announces the
microprocessor
·
1972: IBM comes out with VM: the
Virtual Machine Operating System
·
1973: UNIX 4th Edition is published
·
1973: Ethernet
·
1974 The Personal Computer Age begins
·
1974: Gates and Allen wrote BASIC for
the Altair
·
1976: Apple II
·
August 12, 1981: IBM introduces the IBM
PC
·
1983 Microsoft begins work on
MS-Windows
·
1984 Apple Macintosh comes out
·
1990 Microsoft Windows 3.0 comes out
·
1991 GNU/Linux
·
1992 The first Windows virus comes out
·
1993 Windows NT
·
2007: iOS
·
2008: Android OS
And as the research and development work continues, we are
seeing new operating systems being developed and existing ones getting improved
and modified to enhance the overall user experience, making operating systems
fast and efficient like never before.
Also, with the onset of new devies
like wearables, which includes, Smart Watches, Smart
Glasses, VR gears etc, the demand for unconventional
operating systems is also rising.