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Time Sharing Limited
Time Sharing Limited (TSL) was the United Kingdom's first Time-sharing, time sharing computer services company. 1st. Generation System Time Sharing Limited was founded in 1967 by Richard ("Dick") Evans who had been impressed by Digital Equipment Corporation , Digital Equipment Corporation's minicomputers. It started service from a small office on Great Portland Street, London, with a dual, fault-tolerant system consisting of a front-end switch directing traffic to two units, each consisting of a PDP-7 and a PDP-8. The PDP-7 interpreted messages and the PDP-8 ran the appropriate application. A PDP-9 controlled access to persistent storage based on NCR CRAM Memory. The system used the TELCOMP interpretive language that had been developed by Raytheon BBN Technologies, Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Customers leased a modem from the General Post Office (later BT Group, British Telecom) and a Westrex Teletype Model 33 from TSL. Line speeds were limited to 110 Baud (about 10 characters per se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time-sharing
In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s represented a major technological shift in the history of computing. By allowing many users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one, and promoted the interactive use of computers and the development of new interactive applications. History Batch processing The earliest computers were extremely expensive devices, and very slow in comparison to later models. Machines were typically dedicated to a particular set of tasks and operated by control panels, the operator manually entering small programs via switches in order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drum Memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of the computer. It was so common that these computers were often referred to as ''drum machines''. Some drums were also used as secondary storage as for example various IBM drum storage drives. Drums were displaced as primary computer memory by magnetic core memory, which offered a better balance of size, speed, cost, reliability and potential for further improvements. Drums in turn were replaced by hard disk drives for secondary storage, which were both less expensive and offered denser storage. The manufacturing of drums ceased in the 1970s. Technical design A drum memory or drum storage unit contained a large metal cylinder, coated on the outside surface with a ferromagnetic recording material. It could be considered the precu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defunct Technology Companies Of The United Kingdom
{{Disambiguation ...
Defunct (no longer in use or active) may refer to: * ''Defunct'' (video game), 2014 * Zombie process or defunct process, in Unix-like operating systems See also * * :Former entities * End-of-life product * Obsolescence Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ADP (company)
ADP, Inc. (originally an acronym for Automatic Data Processing) is an American provider of human resources management software and services. History In 1949, Henry Taub founded Automatic Payrolls, Inc. as a manual payroll processing business with his brother Joe Taub. Frank Lautenberg joined the brothers in the company's infancy. In 1957, Lautenberg, after successfully serving in sales and marketing, became a full-fledged partner with the two brothers. In 1961, the company changed its name to Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), and began using punched card machines, check printing machines, and mainframe computers. ADP went public in 1961 with 300 clients, 125 employees, and revenues of approximately $400,000 USD. The company established a subsidiary in the United Kingdom in 1965. In 1970, Lautenberg was noted as being the president of the company. Also in 1970, the company's stock transitioned from trading on American Stock Exchange to trading on the New York Stock Exchange. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TELCOMP
TELCOMP was a programming language developed at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in about 1964 and in use until at least 1974. BBN offered TELCOMP as a paid service, with first revenue in October 1965. The service was sold to On-Line Systems, Inc. (OLS) in 1972. In the United Kingdom, TELCOMP was offered by Time Sharing, Ltd, a partnership between BBN and an entrepreneur named Richard Evans. It was an interactive, conversational language based on JOSS, developed by BBN after Cliff Shaw from RAND visited the labs in 1964 as part of the NIH survey. It was first implemented on the PDP-1 and was used to provide a commercial time sharing service by BBN in the Boston area and later by Time Sharing Ltd. in the United Kingdom. In 1996, Leo Beranek said "We even developed a programming language called TELCOMP that to this day, some say was better than the programming language that the industry adopted, namely BASIC." There were at least three versions: TELCOMP I, TELCOMP II, and TELCOMP ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortran
Fortran (; formerly FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. Fortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing. It has been in use for over seven decades in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography and computational chemistry. It is a popular language for high-performance computing and is used for programs that benchmark and rank the world's fastest supercomputers. Fortran's design was the basis for many other programming languages, especially BASIC and ALGOL. But Fortran has itself evolved through numerous versions and dialects, adding extensions while largely retaining compatibility with preceding versions. Successive versions have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tektronix 4010
The Tektronix 4010 series was a family of text-and-graphics computer terminals based on storage-tube technology created by Tektronix. Several members of the family were introduced during the 1970s, the best known being the 11-inch 4010 and 19-inch 4014, along with the less popular 25-inch 4016. They were widely used in the computer-aided design market in the 1970s and early 1980s. The 4000 series were much less expensive than earlier graphics terminals, such as the IBM 2250, because no additional electronics were needed to maintain the display on the storage-tube screen; images drawn to the screen remained there until deliberately erased. This eliminated the need for computer memory to store the images, which was extremely expensive in the 1970s. The display series remained popular until the introduction of inexpensive graphics workstations in the 1980s. These new graphics workstations used raster displays and dedicated screen buffers that became more affordable as solid-state ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent 700
The Silent 700, introduced in 1971, was a line of portable computer terminals manufactured by Texas Instruments in the 1970s and 1980s. Silent 700s printed with a 5 x 7 dot-matrix heating element onto a roll of heat-sensitive paper. Some models were equipped with an integrated acoustic coupler and modem that could receive data at 30 characters per second. Other models could be directly connected to computers at 300 bits/second (bps), and were sometimes used as the System console where a hard copy record of the activities would be retained for a period of time. Local capabilities A pair of local tape cartridge devices were included, and data could be edited, tape-to-tape, for later transmission. Model 725 The ''Model 725'' added the ability to switch-select bit rates of 110, 150 and 300, corresponding to 10, 15 or 30 characters per second. Model 745 The ''Model 745'' was introduced late 1975 as "the lightest-weight portable now available." 1200 bps As 1200 bps dialup commun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real-time Computing
Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constraints, often referred to as "deadlines". Ben-Ari, Mordechai; "Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming", ch. 16, Prentice Hall, 1990, , page 164 Real-time responses are often understood to be in the order of milliseconds, and sometimes microseconds. A system not specified as operating in real time cannot usually ''guarantee'' a response within any timeframe, although ''typical'' or ''expected'' response times may be given. Real-time processing ''fails'' if not completed within a specified deadline relative to an event; deadlines must always be met, regardless of system load. A real-time system has been described as one which "controls an environment by receiving data, processing them, and returning the results sufficiently quic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TOPS-10
TOPS-10 System (''Timesharing / Total Operating System-10'') is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlier "Monitor" software for the PDP-6 and PDP-10 computers; this was renamed to TOPS-10 in 1970. Overview TOPS-10 supported shared memory and allowed the development of one of the first true multiplayer computer games. The game, called DECWAR, was a text-oriented ''Star Trek'' type game. Users at terminals typed in commands and fought each other in real time. TOPS-10 was also the home of the original Multi User Dungeon, MUD, the fore runner to today's MMORPGs. Another groundbreaking application was called ''FORUM''. This application was perhaps the first so-called ''CB Simulator'' that allowed users to converse with one another in what is now known as a chat room. This application showed the potential of multi-user communication and led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-10
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used. The PDP-10's architecture is almost identical to that of DEC's earlier PDP-6, sharing the same 36-bit word length and slightly extending the instruction set (but with improved hardware implementation). Some aspects of the instruction set are unusual, most notably the ''byte'' instructions, which operate on bit fields of any size from 1 to 36 bits inclusive, according to the general definition of a byte as ''a contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits''. The PDP-10 was found in many university computing facilities and research labs during the 1970s, the most notable being Harvard University's Aiken Computation Laboratory, MIT's AI Lab and Project MAC, Stanford's SAIL, Computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
