Re: [TUHS] Tandem NSK implementation language (was: Happy birthday, John Backus!)

[Dr Iain Maoileoin <iain@csp-partnership.co.uk>]

> On 5 Dec 2018, at 04:48, Paul McJones <paul@mcjones.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Dec 4, 2018, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The original Tandem OS (called Guardian at the time) was written in Tandem's TAL (Transaction Application Language, amongst other productions), a vague evolution of HP's SPL that looked more like Algol, starting in about 1974.  That is also the earliest I know of an operating system being implemented entirely in a high level language.
> 
> Most likely the earliest operating system written in a high-level language was the one for the Burroughs B5000 (early 1960s), written in a dialect of Algol 60. Others: Multics, written in PL/1 (starting in mid 1960s), the  operating system for the Berkeley Computer Corporation’s BCC-500, written in BCC SPL (system programming language) (late 1960s), OS6 by Stoy and Strachey, written in BCPL (early 1970s), Xerox Alto OS, written in BCPL (about 1974).
> 

About 1972 the Department of Computer Science at Strathclyde University in Scotland had an operating system implemented on a front-end-processor (Icant remember the make)  that allowed the submission and control of jobs to a “mainframe” - an ICL 1904s.
The operating system was written in STAB - a language initially designed and developed by Professor Andrew Colin - and loosely modelled on BCPL.

My memory is that the FEP was about 12 19” racks, it supported about 15-20 users and did not lose your files terribly often ;-)