TIME-SHARING

• Timesharing is the technique of scheduling a computer's time so that they are shared across multiple tasks and multiple users, with each user having the illusion that his or her computation is going on continuously.
• It is a mode of operation that allows multiple independent users to share the resources of a multiuser computer system, including the CPU, bus, and memory.Generally, it is accomplished by interleaving computer usage, with the independent applications or users taking turns using computer resources, although the appearance may be of concurrent usage

HISTORY OF TIME-SHARING

John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP(List Processing Language), first imagined this technique in the late 1950s. The first timesharing operating systems, BBN's "Little Hospital" and CTSS(Compatible Time-Sharing System), were deplayed in 1962-63. The early hacker culture of the 1960s and 1970s grew up around the first generation of relatively cheap timesharing computers, notably the DEC(Digital Equipment Corporation) 10, 11, and VAX(Virtual Address eXtension) lines. But these were only cheap in a relative sense; though quite a bit less powerful than today's personal computers, they had to be shared by dozens or even hundreds of people each. The early hacker comunities nucleated around places where it was relatively easy to get access to a timesharing account.