1963 Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks

[RichieM21]

wow haven't seen a chalkboard in a long time xD

[josseppie]

In 20 years computers will be the size of blood cells. Modern science is great.

[gnossticc]

@josseppie What is not great is what path humanity is taking, self-destruction. Science is OK but hey, all this is also making humans poor, spiritually speaking. What's the point if being able to cure diseases if the source is not the disease itself but behaviours that humans have, for example AIDS?

[gonzobrains]

this is a great find!

[luccaskunk]

Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex. I could *pinch* them.

[merkur32123]

@luccaskunk Complex? More like Primitive (for today's standards), but REALLY Primitive. What's complex to you about them?

[luccaskunk]

@merkur32123 I was quoting Marvin Martian...

[jatigre1]

So much for "multi-threading"

[x246869]

We had to upgrade a Honeywell computer in the mid 70s and decided to evaluate the competition too. The Honeywell salesmen told our boss that no one would run a business on a time-sharing computer.

We finally went with a Dec time-sharing machine rather than a Honeywell punch card/tape machine. I made sure of that, having enjoyed the Dec machine so much in school :)

[quintopia]

john finch seems to be pretty smart. i want to see the episode about the trieste now. that was the first bathysphere to hit the bottom of the marianas trench.

[jiuugu]

hehh, Prof. Corbato! Made Multics!

[SmerkNomGool]

Don't kid yourself. These old boys were really smart. There wasn't much of a precedent for what they were trying to accomplish. They were pioneering programming and software ideas.

[Minifig666]

"[In the 50s computers were unreliable, but we resolved those issues]" Then in 2007 a company called Microsoft created Vista....

[ASDD83]

how much cost now these computars ?are they expensive now?

[RussellsParadox]

@ASDD83 I have something that's roughly a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful in my pocket. No exaggeration.

[ASDD83]

how much cost now these computars ?

[webboffin]

If only then Fernando J. Corbato could of known back in 1963 that less than 50 years later that this filmed interview with him would be broadcast via computers over a world wide electronic internet of computers to a range of types of personal computers and smartphones via phone line, optical cable, satellite and wirelessly.

Think his jaw would drop.

[WeltonCG]

@webboffin I've just found out that this guy is still alive! :O

[beamla]

So interesting, I wonder how many more times powerful a modern computer is.

[djratboy2]

"Then when the man types..." ;)

[quintopia]

@djratboy2 if you are trying to imply that sexism was more pronounced then, i think you should know that computer science has always been one of the more equal opportunity fields. the first computer programmer was a woman. It was women who programmed the ENIAC in the war. However, at the time this program was filmed, women were in decline in computing. (Look up a paper called "The Decline of Women in Computer Science from 1940-1982").

[quintopia]

@djratboy2 This trend briefly reversed in the 80s, reversed again heading into the 90s, and I think in the modern day, women are slowly approaching equality with men in the field. (Look at a page called "Male/Female enrollment patterns in EECS at MIT and other schools")

[hairywonder3]

Ha, "...it has a very large capacity of 9 million words."

[CuntryDriver]

History++;

[maxpolaris99]

These college fellas think of everything!

They sure do June, but I'd be very surprised if mankind will ever develop a computer that could answer all of the Beavers questions!

[keithnoguchi]

Thank you so much for sharing the dawn of Multics and the modern computer history here on YouTube. It contains a lot of ideas and techniques, which inspires me a lot even after almost a half century.

[janporra]

19:23 Definitely NOT a COLEMAK keyboard!

[Scousar]

This is superb. Corbatto is actually telling us about Multics a very advanced OS developed at MIT. It never enjoyed great commercial success but it was the first OS to be written in a high level languages (PL/1 also called PL/I).

Unix and later Linux all owe a great deal to Multics, which was better enginered that Unix but was never as freely available, great video, thanks.

[CiphersSon]

9:25 wowi have a viewsonic 120Hz screen that has 3D vision hooked to a i7 with 2 GTX 260s in sli This is amazing how far computers have come in such a short time.

[c0deMunkey]

These guys are proto geeks.

We stand on the shoulders of thee giants.

[skitch88]

i like the music at the end

[Haengma]

Hehe, freight cars of paper.

[dadeo1111]

No offense intended - I meant nerds in the kindest possible definition; a term of endearment for the theoretically proclivic, oft-bespectacled intelligentsia that makes this world, technically, what it is.

[dadeo1111]

There's a difference? I know several scientists that call themselves nerds, geeks, labrats but have never heard them refer to themselves as scientists..not that they don't, I just haven't heard them.

[vikramna2007]

he clearly mentions -Round Robin

[sacreleases]

Nice gem from history. It is hard to imagine for people today what the thought processes were in the past during the early computers. This stuff is what got us where we are today and now taken as a given.. what it was not.

[Struwwel2]

Technology has advanced significantly in the intervening decades, but one thing hasn't changed: computer geeks today look the same as they did then. ; -)

[enantiomer2000]

so that was about 45 years ago. Just imagine what computers will look like in another 45 years...

[zorinlynx]

All I could think of when seeing timesharing explained is "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

He basically described how multitasking works, and still works today.

Memories are bigger, disks are bigger, CPUs are faster, and we have nicer terminals, but it's still basically the same. :)

[qbslug]

600 dollars an hour!... in 1963!

[GloriousOtaku]

later 400,000.00 $ for 12 seconds

[NSResponder]

Very large capacity. Nine megs. Wow.

-jcr

[dadeo1111]

Great prehistoric nerd festival! Worth watching for the nerd styles alone..gottal love the poindexter glasses all around..

[17R3W]

The interesting thing, is this is still a problem when working with expansive computers.

When working at a small TV station, I made a habit having making sure the computer was working while I'm on a break, or after I left work for the day.

I always wanted to have a computer, rendering or compressing as many hours a day as possible.

[17R3W]

Around the 13 minute mark, where he's talking about doing things in burst, that's how computers worked up until just a few years ago. (in fact to a large extent even today).

Until the advent of Hyper-threading and multi-core, a computer could not do two things at once.

When things were "multi-tasked" they were actually processed in short bursts. This all happened so fast that you couldn't tell, but that's how it worked.

[karypm88]

Nice history lesson... and "that guy" is Corbato, who is one of the founding fathers of time-sharing and, indirectly by way of Multics, Unix and Linuxs.

[EricTheRed03]

We're come a far way in 40 years.

[mrjohnson0asdf]

Actually, it's kinda freaky how similar a modern computer still is.. How far we've yet to come.

[LewisLane33]

Great video! One thing that I'm curious about, is did that guy really expect the answer 13 for his hypotenuse calculation? I found that a little funny, as he's a computer programmer, and some kind of expert at MIT, I thought he could have come up with a better estimate that that! I wouldn't have known the exact answer myself, but it's very simple to tell it would be just a little over 12 even for me!

[AppA]

Protip: Next time make sure the audio is right as well :)

[SilentKillayou]

Very nice

[xadam2dudex]

damn this brings back memories.. people don't realize how primitive computers were before the 1990's.. the time sharing concept was the beginning of the modern operating system .. a simple idea with big benefits

[Tekka]

No kidding, they were primitive and much harder to use. Though I'd say the whole experience was more enjoyable. I miss my 8in floppys and monochrome screens darn it. :P

[xadam2dudex]

I miss my commodore 64 I don't miss punch cards

[edusilva3]

@xadam2dudex - Primitive, but extremely well built. Some of them still exists and working in museums. I don't believe today's computers will last for 50 or 60 years...

Just thinking loud, I'm not saying old computers are better! :-) .

[x246869]

We jumped ship from Honeywell to Dec in 1975. The Honeywell salesman tried to prevent it by telling our boss that no one uses timesharing machines for business.

[strictlysega]

@x246869 lol

[hyretech]

That Honeywell salesman was clueless.

Honeywell purchased GE's computer business (and got Multics as a result). Granted, not MANY people used the 6180 for business.

[Maso5]

Awesome video! I tip my hat to the next 45 years of human technology...

[kjetvin]

I love these classic videos, it's so nice to see the history

[wel97459]

All OS basically Time sharing programs running on your computer, the OS dose what the supervisor would do for the consoles that were tied to it.

And in someways its more like a computer terminal servers like SSH.

[dragonheadthing]

Thank you for posting this!