Time-sharing in the context of "History of personal computers"

The history of the Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

Computer science was an emerging discipline in the late 1950s that began to consider time-sharing between computer users, and later, the possibility of achieving this over wide area networks. J. C. R. Licklider developed the idea of a universal network at the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Independently, Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed a distributed network based on data in message blocks in the early 1960s, and Donald Davies conceived of packet switching in 1965 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), proposing a national commercial data network in the United Kingdom.

An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.

Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources.

A personal computer (PC), or simply computer, is a computer designed for personal use. It is typically used for tasks such as word processing, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and gaming. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large, costly minicomputers and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. The term "home computer" has also been used, primarily in the late 1970s and 1980s. The advent of personal computers and the concurrent Digital Revolution have significantly affected the lives of people.

Institutional or corporate computer owners in the 1960s had to write their own programs to do any useful work with computers. While personal computer users may develop their applications, usually these systems run commercial software, free-of-charge software ("freeware"), which is most often proprietary, or free and open-source software, which is provided in ready-to-run, or binary form. Software for personal computers is typically developed and distributed independently from the hardware or operating system manufacturers. Many personal computer users no longer need to write their programs to make any use of a personal computer, although end-user programming is still feasible. This contrasts with mobile systems, where software is often available only through a manufacturer-supported channel and end-user program development may be discouraged by lack of support by the manufacturer.

Tymshare, Inc was a time-sharing service and third-party hardware maintenance company. Competing with companies such as CompuServe, Service Bureau Corporation and National CSS. Tymshare developed and acquired various technologies, such as data networking, electronic data interchange (EDI), credit card and payment processing, and database technology. It was headquartered in Cupertino in California, from 1964 to 1984.

In 1984, Tymshare was acquired by McDonnell Douglas, to which Tymshare had sold its hospital accounting service in 1982. Tymshare was restructured, split up and portions were resold, spun off, and merged with other companies from 1984 through 2004 when most of its legacy network was eventually shut down. Islands of its network technology continued as part of EDI, into 2008.

Christopher S. Strachey (/ˈstreɪtʃi/; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing. He has also been credited as possibly the first developer of a video game and for coining terms such as polymorphism and referential transparency that are still widely used by developers. He was a member of the Strachey family, prominent in government, arts, administration, and academia.

Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving the CPU idle while it waits for I/O operations to complete. However, the term "multitasking" is more common in this context.

An example is a Unix or Unix-like system where multiple remote users have access (such as via a serial port or Secure Shell) to the Unix shell prompt at the same time. Another example uses multiple X Window sessions spread across multiple terminals powered by a single machine – this is an example of the use of thin client. Similar functions were also available in a variety of non-Unix-like operating systems, such as Multics, VM/CMS, OpenVMS, MP/M, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, REAL/32, OASIS, THEOS, PC-MOS, TSX-32 and VM/386.