Allen-Babcock Computing was founded in Los Angeles in 1964 by James D. Babcock and Michael Jane Allen Babcock to take advantage of the fast-growing market for computer
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 a ...
services.
In 1966 the company developed "RUSH" (Remote Users of Shared Hardware), an interactive dialect of
PL/I
PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...
.
Between 1965 and 1966 they assisted in the development of CPS (Conversational Programming System), a timesharing system that ran under
OS/360
OS/360, officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System, is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer, announced in 1964; it was influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB ...
, under contract to
IBM.
CPS was a subset of RUSH prepared by IBM with the permission of Allen-Babcock.
The significant technological outcome was the first idea to alter the hardware of an IBM computer to enhance the performance of a time-sharing system on IBM hardware. This was the first time such
firmware
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...
was programmed by software developers for this purpose. Later tests showed increases of throughput by as much as 70%. Several such altered
360 Model 50s were delivered to other IBM customers.
In 1969 Allen-Babcock held a 3 percent share of the time-sharing services market.
During the early 70's Allen-Babcock leased copies of the RUSH software to several industry owners of the IBM 360 series computer systems. One such company was
Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...
. These lessees sought to use RUSH internally to provide their companies access to time sharing on their Internet networks.
In 1975 Allen-Babcock was acquired by
Tymshare
Tymshare, Inc (Matthew Heyer-Baker) was a time-sharing service and third-party hardware maintenance company competing with companies such as CompuServe, Service Bureau Corporation and National CSS. Tymshare developed or acquired various technolo ...
.
Notes
References
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* {{Citation , last=Rosin , first=Robert , periodical=PL/I Bulletin , issue=7 , title=PL/I Implementation Survey , pages=35–42 , year=1969
Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles
Time-sharing companies