MulticsOs
Last edit June 24, 2008
MULTICS
a.k.a. MIT
Project MAC
:
M
ultiple-
A
ccess
C
omputing
A very early
time-sharing
-oriented
OperatingSystem
written in a preliminary version of PL/I (
PliLanguage
) named
EPL
. One of the descendants of CTSS, the
CompatibleTimeSharingSystem
.
The progenitor of
UnixOs
.
Multics was never a big success in commercial or installed-base terms, and nowadays it's mostly famous for falling victim to both
BigDesignUpFront
and the
SecondSystemEffect
during its inception. But many important
OperatingSystem
features appeared first or early on it, including I/O redirection (see
UnixShellPatterns
), the
HierarchicalFileSystem
, virtual memory, (partial) implementation in a
HighLevelLanguage
, and
AccessControlList
s. It went on to host much important software, including
MulticsEmacs
and the first commercial
RelationalDatabase
.
History and anecdodes:
http://www.multicians.org/
June 2008 - the full Multics sources and documentation are now available at
http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/
Presently there's no emulator to run them, though.
CategoryOperatingSystem
CategoryPli