page_title: Operating system
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Operating system / History
caption_attribution_description: English: IBM System 360/65 Operator's Panel. The IBM System/360 Model 65 first shipped in 1966.
context_page_description: An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
  Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, printing, and other resources.
  For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones and video game consoles to web servers and supercomputers.
  The dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 82.74%. macOS by Apple Inc. is in second place, and the varieties of Linux are collectively in third place. In the mobile sector, Android's share is up to 70% in the year 2017.
context_section_description: Early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could automatically run different programs in succession to speed up processing. Operating systems did not exist in their modern and more complex forms until the early 1960s.   Hardware features were added, that enabled use of runtime libraries, interrupts, and parallel processing. When personal computers became popular in the 1980s, operating systems were made for them similar in concept to those used on larger computers.
  In the 1940s, the earliest electronic digital systems had no operating systems.  Electronic systems of this time were programmed on rows of mechanical switches or by jumper wires on plugboards.  These were special-purpose systems that, for example, generated ballistics tables for the military or controlled the printing of payroll checks from data on punched paper cards.  After programmable general purpose computers were invented, machine languages (consisting of strings of the binary digits 0 and 1 on punched paper tape) were introduced that sped up the programming process (Stern, 1981).
  In the early 1950s, a computer could execute only one program at a time.  Each user had sole use of the computer for a limited period and would arrive at a scheduled time with their program and data on punched paper cards or punched tape. The program would be loaded into the machine, and the machine would be set to work until the program completed or crashed. Programs could generally be debugged via a front panel using toggle switches and panel lights. It is said that Alan Turing was a master of this on the early Manchester Mark 1 machine, and he was already deriving the primitive conception of an operating system from the principles of the universal Turing machine.
  Later machines came with libraries of programs, which would be linked to a user's program to assist in operations such as input and output and compiling (generating machine code from human-readable symbolic code). This was the genesis of the modern-day operating system. However, machines still ran a single job at a time. At Cambridge University in England, the job queue was at one time a washing line (clothes line) from which tapes were hung with different colored clothes-pegs to indicate job priority.
  An improvement was the Atlas Supervisor. Introduced with the Manchester Atlas in 1962, it is considered by many to be the first recognisable modern operating system. Brinch Hansen described it as "the most significant breakthrough in the history of operating systems."
caption: OS/360 was used on most IBM mainframe computers beginning in 1966, including computers used by the Apollo program.
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