THE PROJECT

In contrast to other projects, this one was quite modest. It began in the summer of 1968 with a faculty advisor and four programmers from the computer center, two of whom were half time. This rose to a maximum in 1971 of about nine programmers in the core group, with maybe five others doing peripheral tasks. Some of these programmers were still part time. This should be contrasted with Multics, involving 150 to 200 man years [C3]. In terms of machine time used, during the period of maximum system development, we had access to a 6400 for 12 hours per day during the work week, and numerous hours on weekends. About half of this machine time was used for system debugging and the other half to supply basic computing services, such as editing program files and assembling them, to the system programmers and some outside users.