What was the first operating system?

[aimeeandbeatles]

I always thought the first OS was Unix, but I googled it and it seems not. The pages are a bit confusing, could someone please clear me up?

Thanks.

 

[Turner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM-NAA_I/O

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_operating_systems

It is generally thought that the first operating system used for real work was GM-NAA I/O, produced in 1956 by General Motors' Research division for its IBM 704. [1] Most other early operating systems for IBM mainframes were also produced by customers.[2]

Early operating systems were very diverse, with each vendor or customer producing one or more operating systems specific to their particular mainframe computer. Every operating system, even from the same vendor, could have radically different models of commands, operating procedures, and such facilities as debugging aids. Typically, each time the manufacturer brought out a new machine, there would be a new operating system, and most applications would have to be manually adjusted, recompiled, and retested.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Cool. Didn't think an automobile manufacturer would create the first OS. It seems like more like a university would.

 

[Padma]

Cool. Didn't think an automobile manufacturer would create the first OS. It seems like more like a university would.

"It is generally thought that the first operating system used for real work was GM-NAA I/O..."

There have been operating systems since the first computers. They wouldn't be more than huge, expensive calculators without them. (The very first computers were just huge, expensive calculators.)

GM, along with many other industrial corporations, was an early adopter of computers, to help automate assembly-line processes.

(Aside - the first computer system I worked on was originally designed and built by General Electric. )

 

[Strider]

I believe that the engineers created their own OS's for each specific mainframe back in the old days. It may be hard to determine a "first."

 

[Padma]

True. But like I said, the first computers were really just huge, expensive calculators. They could only run ONE program at a time - not really an OS. Just boot the machine with whatever program you need to run (like artillery calculation tables). When it was done, you powered it down, loaded the card deck for the next program, and rebooted.

 

[GenMarshall]

I'd suspect that the first OS had a text based interface .

 

[Strider]

True. But like I said, the first computers were really just huge, expensive calculators. They could only run ONE program at a time - not really an OS. Just boot the machine with whatever program you need to run (like artillery calculation tables). When it was done, you powered it down, loaded the card deck for the next program, and rebooted.

Not really a OS by today's standards. I'm sure back then they would not have considered XP to be an OS by their own standards.

 

[Strider]

I'd suspect that the first OS had a text based interface .

I believe it actually had a switch-based interface. I may be mistaken (I'm not a computer history expert), but I believe they manually switched each bit (the 0's and 1's) on and off.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Yep, the first computers in the 40's had no graphical output. ( well, graphical as we know it now, they had lights and stuff). They usually lit up lights or stamped out punch cards to output information. They also sometimes used basically a typewriter hooked up to the computer to print out information.

The first 'operating systems' in such computers were groups of people, usually women during the war, who would literally move around plugs to set up a program for the computer to run.
The ESDAC ( 1949 ) was probably the first computer that was practical and had an operating system as we tend to think of it -- a piece of software that operates the mechanical and electronic components. The ESDAC was the first practical computer that was able to store a program. It used a mercury delay line to store 1k words.

 

[Padma]

Aside: When I was stationed at HQ SAC, we had a system that was known as the SPE (pronounced 'spee') an acronym for Stored Program Equipment. It could actually store more than one program in it's system, to be called up later!

(And it was still in use in the 90s....)