24 Aug
2026
24 Aug
'26
7:14 p.m.
On Mon, 2026-08-24 at 22:09 -0500, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
Hmm, I hadn't ever heard of anything referred to
as "Tymnet." The
product I came across was (I believe) a follow on or derivative of
BTS (SDS
940), starting c. 1967 Tymeshare (with a y). I had assumed it was
US-based, but possibly am mistaken.
I did a little bit of digging and found this:
Tymshare was an independent computer time-sharing company founded in
1964 by Tom O'Rourke and Dave Schmidt, former engineers from General
Electric. Tymnet was developed later as a proprietary packet-switched
data communications network built and operated by Tymshare itself. [1
[1], 2 [2], 3 [3]]
I had thought they were maybe CDC-based, but there were based on SDS
(formerly GE?) 940 and DEC PDP-10.
— Van
-Steve
On Mon, Aug 24, 2026 at 1:38 PM Ken Seefried <seefriek(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2026 at 4:47 AM Steve Lewis via cctalk <
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > 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?).
> >
> >
> >
> Sorry, I should probably look through the preso before replying,
> but are
> you perhaps thinking of "Tymnet", a product of Tymeshare, Inc.
> (with an
> 'e')?
>
> KJ
>
[1] 1
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe-computers/7/181
[2] 2 https://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/t-z/tymshare-inc/
[3] 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet