It all started in 1965 when the experimental project MAC was completed at MIT – the first system of its kind. This was the beginning of the MULTICS era. It used something called CTSS, or the Compatible Time Sharing System.
This was a key innovation at that time. Up to this point, we were in the early mainframe era, where massive, powerful, and extremely costly computers used to take up entire rooms.
To get tasks done, programmers would write code by hand. Then they’d punch a deck of paper tape cards that were encoded with the program written by hand.
They did this by handing the sheets of paper the program was written on to operators who used a key punch machine that would punch the card’s holes and represent the data and instructions on the card.
Then they’d feed the punched cards to a punch card reader connected to the mainframe computer. It then converted the sequences in the cards holes to digital information. Simple tasks took a long time using this method and only one person could use each machine at a time.
The idea of time sharing changed everything. Instead of using cards, it attached multiple consoles (which at the time were mechanical terminals called teletypes) to a main computer. This allowed many people to use the same computer simultaneously.
Over 100 typewriter terminals spread around MIT’s campus could be attached to one main big computer. This system supported up to 30 remote users at the same time, each using one of those terminals.
