Michigan Terminal System
Overview
The Michigan Terminal System (MTS) was a pioneering operating system developed in the 1960s and early 1970s by a group of eight universities in the United States and Canada. It was designed to support a wide range of computer hardware and software, and was notable for its innovative features, including a high degree of interactivity, support for a large number of simultaneous users, and the ability to share resources among users.
Development
The development of MTS began in 1967 at the University of Michigan, with the goal of creating a new operating system that could handle the university's growing computing needs. The project was led by a team of computer scientists and engineers, who worked closely with other researchers at the university and at other institutions to design and implement the system.
MTS was designed to run on a variety of different hardware platforms, including both mainframe computers and smaller, more affordable minicomputers. This flexibility was a key factor in the system's success, as it allowed institutions with different types of computer hardware to use the same operating system.
Features
MTS was notable for its many innovative features. One of the most important was its support for interactive computing. Unlike many other operating systems of the time, which were primarily designed for batch processing, MTS was designed to allow users to interact directly with the computer, entering commands and receiving immediate feedback.
MTS also supported a large number of simultaneous users. This was achieved through the use of time-sharing, a technique that allows multiple users to share access to the computer's resources. This feature made MTS particularly well-suited for use in educational institutions, where many users often needed to use the computer at the same time.
Another key feature of MTS was its support for resource sharing. This allowed users to share files and other resources with each other, a feature that was relatively rare in other operating systems of the time.
Legacy
MTS was widely used in the 1970s and 1980s, and had a significant impact on the development of later operating systems. Many of its features, such as interactive computing and resource sharing, have become standard features of modern operating systems.
Despite its success, MTS was eventually phased out in favor of newer operating systems. However, its influence can still be seen in many aspects of modern computing, and it remains an important part of the history of computer science.