A British Multi-Access System on an IBM System/360 Computer

Abstract

Following the success of the Compatible Time-Sharing System [1], and its brilliant exploitation in Project MAC at MIT (now the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL), many institutions began making similar systems. Among the British ones were a multi-access extension for the supervisor for the Titan computer at Cambridge [2], COTAN [3-4] at Culham on an English Electric KDF-9, KOS [5] at the University of Kent at Canterbury on an Elliott 4130, and HUW at Harwell on an IBM System/360 computer, the subject of this paper. Harwell Users’ Workshop HUW was set up to provide interactive facilities for computer users at A.E.R.E Harwell. HUW was designed in 1965, following the author’s sabbatical visit to Project MAC.