25 Aug
2026
25 Aug
'26
10:02 a.m.
Steve et al.
I'm not exactly sure how it fits into this discussion, but you ought to take a look at
the Lockheed MIS system, which is now an IEEE milestone at:
https://ethw.org/Milestones: Pioneering_Medical_Information_System,_1965-1974
Its prototype began in 1966 and was fully operational by 1968, running at the Mayo Clinic
on an SDS-92 and operating about five terminals and several printers. It was then ported
to an IBM/360 M40 and was in production on an IBM S/370 M155 about 1972.
Essentially, MIS software was a transaction processing supervisor that took over control
of the hardware and turned it into a multi-processing transaction processor which by the
mid-70s was in production servicing four different hospitals with hundreds of terminals.
A block diagram of the system architecture is on sheet 52 of this document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GogbWimvoNvh2n1550Qxa0wmHVDtZWVM/view?usp=…. As it
says, "This software is organized in three basic groups—each of which operates
relatively independently from the others on a time-shared basis—and communicates with the
others by passing messages back and forth." In the IBM DOS era, DOS was just one of
the three "basic groups" with the others being a terminal handling group and a
transaction processor. How they managed to run it on later IBM OSs is a bit of a mystery,
but it ran on IBM mainframes until 2020!
It died this century, mainly because management never extended its capability into the
physician's office.
From a UX perspective, it was renowned for its response time and ease of use, and most
current users familiar with MIS say its performance still isn't matched by today's
medical informatics systems.
tom
On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 3:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Hey gang, a few months ago I presented about timeshare and some
aspects about operating systems since the 1950s.
To buzz through a PDF or PPT version of the notes:
https://github.com/voidstar78/VCF2026
VCFSW has the talk archived here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE235ti9XQ
Sorry being a bit dull as a speaker, but a few highlights:
- overview of Douglass Ross "Director Tape" for Whirlwind (only "what
it looked like" evidence that I was ever able to find, would be
curious if others knew more about it)
- 1965 Honeywell ADMIRAL OS: while I couldn't find much info about
that specific OS, what I did find what Honeywell went to bat for us
all vs RAND corp, putting an end some concerns about ENIAC hardware
patents (that's a very short version of it)
- today we fight about \ vs / slashes, when MULTICS split the
difference and used > (greater than symbol), at least as far as I
could tell from the manuals
- some verification that UNIX was (sort of) originally called UNICS
(see footnotes in the PPT notes), never formally written down but
"verified" in the past year
- I made a claim that Datapoint CTOS (1972) was the only OS ever on a
cassette tape (not to be confused with the late 1970s CTOS) - that
said, I suppose the MCM/70 did as well; really admires Mattis Lind's
work on the
DP2200
I never found too much info about "tymshare" (apparently a late 1960s
kind of "corporate or business-to-business digital exchange" system,
maybe for inventory or check-processing?).
Tons of other OS's, obviously couldn't cover them all in a VCF talk.
But there are a bunch of addendum notes after the end of the slides:
- Mike Muuss ENIAC archive (at a .mil ftp if anyone wants to archive
it more properly?)
- I still claim that the word "operating system" was never used before
1960; the "SOS" or "share OS" was a name applied later (1962ish) to
those pre-1960s concepts [ afaik ]
- I couldn't fit in a bit about squozed :) really wanted to, just
couldn't make it fit
- AOSP, EXEC II, IBM 1800 derivatives (anyone ever see one of these
in the wild?),
Oh, not officially launched yet, but I'm now self hosting oldsayings.info
(with a telnet front-end at port 42525). Kicking around some ideas,
but it's reliably staying up now with Starlink as the ISP. I got
tired of waiting for fiber - but the county workers are getting
closer, I see them running it ranch by ranch.
Cheers, wish could have made it to VCF West this year.
-Steve
--
--Carey