On Sun, 2026-03-01 at 14:47 -0500, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > > > > On Mar 1, 2026, at 2:34 AM, Steve Lewis via cctalk > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > ... > > Anyway, apologies - it was just something that only recently > > occurred to > > me, that basically all of the original operating systems originated > > on > > punch cards: CTSS, Supervisor, AOSP, SCOPE, even MULTICs. > > That's certainly not true. It may be true for card-centric outfits > like IBM. I don't know what early DEC development looked like, but > considering the rarity of card handling equipment on DEC systems I > would expect paper tape. > > Early software for the Dutch machines I know was done on paper tape. > In some cases that involved punch equipment with custom-designed > coding; for example, the Electrologica X1 had a rudimentary assembler > in ROM (along with a BIOS) and source text was given to it on 5- > channel paper tape, in a code slightly above straight binary machine > language. > > Its successor the X8 had paper tape I/O standard, and the standard > executable file loaders used paper tapes. Ditto the bootstrap. The > famous THE operating system was a paper tape batch system, with the > OS image supplied on tape (though I think at some point it was moved > to magtape for faster startup). No punched cards were seen there > until the X8 was replaced by a Burroughs 6800, circa 1974, and even > that machine had paper tape input to support all the applications > that had the input data on paper tape. My father's precision > measurement lab (part of the ME department) had instruments that > punched the measurements onto paper tape, for later processing by > that central computer system. All that was in ALGOL, by the way. > > paul
I used a Bendix G-15 in 1963. It didn't really have an OS, but it did have a simple one-address interpreter called INTERCOM that included floating point and math functions. All on paper tape.
