Berkeley Time-Sharing System (1966)

The Berkeley Time-Sharing System (BTSS) was a prototype, neither robust nor complete enough for production use. A significant show-stopper lay in the fact that BTSS did not support storage other than tape. Swapping workspace between users could take several minutes, effectively limiting the timesharing to the number of users that could fit in main memory. That it needed work before placing it in a production environment would be a masterful understatement. Ann told Dave that what he needed to do was to hire her to write their operating system. The Tym Before ...

So he did.

In February 1966, Ann left Livermore to join fledgling timesharing company Tymshare as employee number five. The company had been formally incorporated only one month before she accepted the job. Tymshare Associates became Tymshare, Inc. in January of 1966, with Tom O'Rourke as President and Chairman of the Board. Dave Schmidt became Executive Vice President and assumed the additional duty as General Manager of the Technical Division. This milestone was the culmination of seven-months work since Dave and Tom left GE.

The Berkeley software was officially delivered to Tymshare in March of 1966, but they as yet had no computer. SDS-940 Serial Number 1 was delivered in May 1966, three months after Dave hired Ann. It came with a paper tape reader in addition to the magnetic tape. She rewrote the Berkeley system to make use of disk and drum drives for high-speed swap space. Although the Berkeley Time-Sharing System was a good start, it was woefully incomplete and lacked almost everything, especially device support. The computer finally arrived and Ann set out to correct those deficiencies.

In July 1966, the first users began using the system on a no-charge basis. The maximum number of simultaneous users was eight. The system was demonstrated at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in November to euphoric reviews. The Tym Before ...

Bills went out, billing the users for their usage beginning November 1, 1966. However, the system was still experiencing teething problems and was down a significant amount of time, especially all of November 1st and 2nd. Despite this, the bills went out, and the users paid, albeit with some grumbling. Despite the poor service, those early customers were on the cutting edge of technology and knew it. The Tym Before ...