When was the First Operating System Developed ?
The first Operating System was developed in the mid 1950s. Before the dawn of operating systems, a computer could execute only one program at a given time. The original operating systems were essentially in charge of allowing numerous applications to run at the same time and then calculating the CPU's billing expenses accordingly. They functioned as managers This was known as a single-stream batch processing system. Besides supervising programs, these were also responsible for I/O operations.
The first Operating System was GMOS by General Motors for IBM 701.
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How was the First Operating System Developed?
In the earlier days, programming was done by physically manipulating the circuitry of the machine. An assembly language was subsequently developed to write code for this physical manipulation. Soon they decided to write a compiler in this assembly language, which would compile C( user language) into the assembly language. Now, the operating system would be developed on a high-level language like C, C++, etc., and develop its respective compiler in the same language.
Why was the First Operating System Developed?
Traditional computers were extremely slow, however, they were a lot faster than programmers who would load and unload tape cards (punch cards for memory). Because computers could complete operations quicker, they had needlessly long idle intervals. Operating systems were developed to strategically leverage idle times and use them for processing multiple programs at the same time to save time and compute resources.
Note:
- The OS defines a program or a job that has a predefined sequence of commands as a single unit.
- The operating system retains several jobs in memory and executes them without the need for any manual input.
- Jobs are processed in the order in which they were received.
Examples of Operating Systems
Examples of modern operating systems would be Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, Apple iOS, Linux Operating Systems, etc.
To learn more about Operating Systems, check out What is Operating System.
Conclusion
- An OS acts as an interface between the users and the computer.
- The first OS was developed in the mid 1950s by General Motors for IBM 701. It was called GMOS.
- Operating systems enable computers to process multiple programs at the same time and reduce idle time.
- Multiple lines of code need to be written for developing an OS.
- Windows, macOS, Linux Operating Systems, etc. are common operating systems.
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