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VPS/VM (Virtual Processing System/Virtual Machine) was an operating system that ran on IBM System/370 - System/3090 computers at Boston University in general use from 1977 to around 1990, and in limited use until at least 1993. During the 1980s VPS/VM was the main operating system of Boston University and often ran up to 250 users at a time when rival VM/CMS computing systems could only run 120 or so users.

The CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. It is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, outperforming its fastest predecessor, IBM 7030 Stretch, by about three times. With performance of about 1 megaFLOPS, it remained the world's fastest computer from 1964–69, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600.

In computing, an interrupt is an asynchronous signal indicating the need for attention or a synchronous event in software indicating the need for a change in execution. A hardware interrupt causes the processor to save its state of execution and begin execution of an interrupt handler. Software interrupts are usually implemented as instructions in the instruction set, which cause a context switch to an interrupt handler similar to a hardware interrupt.

Digital Equipment Corporation was an American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s. Also known as DEC[1] and using the trademark DIGITAL, its PDP and VAX products were arguably the most popular minicomputers for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s.

Jack Dennis is a computer scientist and retired MIT professor. Dennis entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1949 as an electrical engineering major; he received his MS degree in 1954, and continued doctoral research and received his ScD in 1958. He became a full professor at MIT in 1969.

The Datapoint 2200 was a mass-produced programmable terminal, designed by Phil Ray and Gus Roche,[2] announced by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) in June, 1970 (with units shipping in 1971). It was intended by its designers simply to be a versatile, cost-efficient terminal for connecting to a wide variety of mainframes by loading various terminal emulations from tape rather than being hardwired as most terminals were. However, enterprising users in the business sector (including Pillsbury Foods) realized that this so-called "programmable terminal" was equipped to perform any task a simple computer could, and exploited this fact by using their 2200s as standalone computer systems. Equally significant is the fact that the terminal's multi-chip CPU (processor) was the embryo of the x86 microprocessor instruction set architecture, which powered the original IBM PC and has powered all of its descendants since.

VP/CSS was a time-sharing operating system developed by National CSS. It began life in 1968 as a copy of IBM's CP/CMS, which at the time was distributed to IBM customers at no charge, in source code form, without support, as part of the IBM Type-III Library. Through extensive in-house development, in what today would be termed a software fork, National CSS took VP/CSS in a different direction from CP/CMS. Although the two systems would eventually share many capabilities, their technical implementations diverged in substantive ways.

MPE (Multi-Programming Executive) is a business-oriented minicomputer operating system made by Hewlett-Packard.

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. EBCDIC descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding six bit binary-coded decimal code used with most of IBM's computer peripherals of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Here’s how computers arose.… Ancient history The first programmable computers were invented in the 1940’s. Before then, people were stuck with the abacus, adding machine, and slide rule. During the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, most computers used punched cards — whose history is weird. The cards were first used for weaving tapestries. Where the cards had holes, rods could move through the cards; those moving rods in turn made other rods move, which caused the threads to weave pictures. That machine was called the Jacquard loom. Charles Babbage Charles Babbage was a wild-eyed English mathematician who, in the 1800’s, believed he could build a fancy computing machine. He convinced the British government to give him lots of money, then bilked the government for more. Many years later — and many British pounds later — he still hadn’t finished his machine. So he dropped the idea and — can you believe this? — tried to build an even fancier machine. He didn’t finish that one either. You might say his life was a failure that was expensive for the British government.