History of operating systems

Early examples were primitive compared to today’s all-rounders, which excel at multitasking and allowing any type of application to run. At this rate, the future will truly be spectacular.

Here I mention in short the history of the operating systems as they were developed in the particular years which I found interesting.

1956: GM-NAA I/O
The first operating system is introduced by
General Motors on the IBM 704 mainframe
computer. However it does not do anything
more than simple batch processing.

1969: Unix
Ken Thompson and Dennis
Ritchie need a high performance
platform for their game “Space Travel”—
and develop the first modern
operating system.

1973: Xerox Alto
The first system with a graphical interface is used
only for research purposes till 1981.

1981: MS-DOS
The simple operating system shipped
with thousands of PCs and helped
Microsoft cement its breakthrough.

1983: Lisa OS
Apple launches the first desktop computer
controlled by a mouse. Microsoft copies the
concept shortly afterwards.

1985: Windows 1.0
Designed as a graphical interface for DOS, its
development takes two years. Initially, the system
is a commercial flop.

1989: Epoc16
This forerunner of Symbian OS is the first multitasking
Operating system with a graphical interface for mobile
devices.

1992: Linux
Linus Torvalds releases the system with the Unix kernel
as open source. He originally wanted to name it "Freax".

1995: Windows 95
Microsoft’s 32-bit OS for home users becomes a hit. A
million packages are sold within the first four days.

2001: Windows XP
The combination of the NT and 95 series is the most
popular Windows version even today—in spite of
product activation schemes which were introduced
at the time.
Mac OS X
Apple pulls off a huge shift in strategy and launches an
OS based on Unix with colorful, animated desktop elements.

2007: Singularity
Microsoft Research develops a completely new operating system
which eliminates blue screens and buffer overflows with its
re-engineered architecture.

2010: Windows 7
Modern systems have to be multifunctional, and Vista’s
successor should be light enough even for net-books.
Moreover, it will support multi-touch gesture input.