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Who introduced named files?

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  Who introduced named files? Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2020-06-11 13:14 +0000
    Re: Who introduced named files? Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-11 08:56 -0500
      personal histories [was Re: Who introduced named files?] Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2020-06-11 19:08 -0400
        Re: personal histories Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-11 18:58 -0500
          Re: personal histories Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2020-06-12 19:04 -0400
            Re: personal histories Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-13 05:51 -0700
            Re: personal histories Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-16 10:59 -0500
    Re: Who introduced named files? John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2020-06-11 17:15 +0000
      Re: Who introduced named files? Douglas Miller <durgadas311@gmail.com> - 2020-06-11 10:24 -0700
      Re: Who introduced named files? rst@panix.com (Robert Thau) - 2020-06-14 19:36 +0000
    Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-11 23:53 -0700
      Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-12 00:12 -0700
        Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-12 00:30 -0700
          Re: Who introduced named files? Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> - 2020-06-12 07:35 +0000
            Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-12 06:40 -0700
              Re: Who introduced named files? Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> - 2020-06-12 09:03 -0500
                Re: Who introduced named files? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-12 07:49 -0700
            Re: Who introduced named files? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2020-06-15 22:10 +0000
          Re: Who introduced named files? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-12 07:49 -0700
            Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-12 15:35 -0700
              Re: Who introduced named files? John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2020-06-13 00:08 +0000
                Re: Who introduced named files? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2020-06-12 17:15 -0700
                  Re: Who introduced named files? Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> - 2020-06-13 05:46 +0000
                  Re: Who introduced named files? Gareth Evans <headstone255@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-14 13:58 +0100
              Re: Who introduced named files? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2020-06-13 05:51 -0700
                Re: Who introduced named files? John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2020-06-13 14:45 +0000
    Re: Who introduced named files? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2020-06-12 13:25 -0500
    Re: Who introduced named files? Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2020-06-13 15:18 -1000

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#211870 — Who introduced named files?

I've been looking around a bit, but I cannot find which operating
system introduced named files.

OS/360 certainly had them, as did EXEC II.  I would think that
peole started using them as soon as discs with random access made
their appearance - does anybody know more?

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#211871

I have wondered about that too.

I remember my transition from using decks of cards with names marked across the tops with a marker 
pen to files stored on disk drives that used names for retrieval.

That was when I was a student at UT Austin in 1969 using the CDC-6600 and an operating system named 
COS (Chippewa Operating System) .

The access I had to that computer as a student was limited to batch jobs - cards in - paper out.

Later as a staff member I had an account that could store data in named files on tape, and have 
them retrieve my files for access via a TTY.

  - Larry


On 6/11/2020 8:14 AM, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> I've been looking around a bit, but I cannot find which operating
> system introduced named files.
> 
> OS/360 certainly had them, as did EXEC II.  I would think that
> people started using them as soon as discs with random access made
> their appearance - does anybody know more?
> 

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#211877 — personal histories [was Re: Who introduced named files?]

Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> writes:

> That was when I was a student at UT Austin in 1969 using the CDC-6600 and an
> operating system named COS (Chippewa Operating System) .

I knew that system!  I was a freshman in the fall of 1969 at UT; I had a
work-study job with the School of Education's CAI Lab, working with an IBM 1800
in the basement of Sutton Hall and the administration's System/360 Model 50 in
the basement of the Tower.

When interviewing for a work-study job, I got sent over to the computer center
and got my first look at the 6600.  The next year, I took a COMPASS class, but
they were running SCOPE by that time.

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

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#211878 — Re: personal histories

You and I shared the same Freshman year at UT Austin.

What a huge enrollment!    What a great football team.

Austin Texas and UT was such a fun place compared to my tiny rural high school in East Texas.

I started out as a Chemistry Major, but took a test during admissions that let me opt out of
taking the usual Freshman Chemistry course.  So, I took an experimental course for freshmen
by Dr F. A. Matsen named  "The Vector Space Theory of Matter", and they taught us FORTRAN.

I was hooked immediately on writing software.

So I changed my major to Math/CS.

I had a part time job coding for graduate students in the Physical Chemistry Dept (mostly FORTRAN
for doing matrix calculations for their Quantum Mechanics models) or various things for the CS Dept
through Dr. Brown all four years I attended as an undergraduate.

I had no idea that having a CDC-6600 as your first computer was quite unusual.

  - Larry

On 6/11/2020 6:08 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> writes:
> 
>> That was when I was a student at UT Austin in 1969 using the CDC-6600 and an
>> operating system named COS (Chippewa Operating System) .
> 
> I knew that system!  I was a freshman in the fall of 1969 at UT; I had a
> work-study job with the School of Education's CAI Lab, working with an IBM 1800
> in the basement of Sutton Hall and the administration's System/360 Model 50 in
> the basement of the Tower.
> 
> When interviewing for a work-study job, I got sent over to the computer center
> and got my first look at the 6600.  The next year, I took a COMPASS class, but
> they were running SCOPE by that time.
> 

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#211921 — Re: personal histories

Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> writes:

> On 6/11/2020 6:08 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:

>> I knew that system!  I was a freshman in the fall of 1969 at UT; I had a
>> work-study job with the School of Education's CAI Lab, working with an IBM 1800
>> in the basement of Sutton Hall and the administration's System/360 Model 50 in
>> the basement of the Tower.

> You and I shared the same Freshman year at UT Austin.

Cool!  Hook 'em, 'Horns!

> What a huge enrollment!    What a great football team.

> Austin Texas and UT was such a fun place compared to my tiny rural high
> school in East Texas.

> I started out as a Chemistry Major, but took a test during admissions that
> let me opt out of taking the usual Freshman Chemistry course.  So, I took an
> experimental course for freshmen by Dr F. A. Matsen named "The Vector Space
> Theory of Matter", and they taught us FORTRAN.

I learned FORTRAN on an IBM 1401 the last semester of my senior year in a
Chicao suburb, while Dad finished his doctorate at Northwestern.  That's why
the work-study folks were sending me to computer-related jobs!  (I'm a native
Texan, born in Denison, but that's another story altogether.)

> I was hooked immediately on writing software.

> So I changed my major to Math/CS.

Perfectly reasonable.  I was a linguistics major from the get-go.

> I had a part time job coding for graduate students in the Physical Chemistry
> Dept (mostly FORTRAN for doing matrix calculations for their Quantum
> Mechanics models) or various things for the CS Dept through Dr. Brown all
> four years I attended as an undergraduate.

> I had no idea that having a CDC-6600 as your first computer was quite unusual.

>   - Larry

You've just missed having some fun.  I work(ed) at Living Computers: Museum+Labs
in Seattle for the last 17 years.  We restored a 6500 (originally at Purdue from
1967-1989, then in the Chippewa Falls Museum of Industry and Technology till
2011) and have given free accounts on it for several years.  Unfortunately, the
museum is closing for 12-18 months (due to the effects of the pandemic on any
museum and more especially on "touch everything" museums).

My friend who got me the museum job was an operator at the UTCC, but only after
they had moved from the 6600 onto a Cyber.  He's retired back to Austin, which
was home for him all along.

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

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#211937 — Re: personal histories

Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:
> Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> writes:
> 
>> On 6/11/2020 6:08 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> 
>>> I knew that system!  I was a freshman in the fall of 1969 at UT; I had a
>>> work-study job with the School of Education's CAI Lab, working with an IBM 1800
>>> in the basement of Sutton Hall and the administration's System/360 Model 50 in
>>> the basement of the Tower.
> 
>> You and I shared the same Freshman year at UT Austin.
> 
> Cool!  Hook 'em, 'Horns!
> 
>> What a huge enrollment!    What a great football team.
> 
>> Austin Texas and UT was such a fun place compared to my tiny rural high
>> school in East Texas.
> 
>> I started out as a Chemistry Major, but took a test during admissions that
>> let me opt out of taking the usual Freshman Chemistry course.  So, I took an
>> experimental course for freshmen by Dr F. A. Matsen named "The Vector Space
>> Theory of Matter", and they taught us FORTRAN.
> 
> I learned FORTRAN on an IBM 1401 the last semester of my senior year in a
> Chicao suburb, while Dad finished his doctorate at Northwestern.  That's why
> the work-study folks were sending me to computer-related jobs!  (I'm a native
> Texan, born in Denison, but that's another story altogether.)
> 
>> I was hooked immediately on writing software.
> 
>> So I changed my major to Math/CS.
> 
> Perfectly reasonable.  I was a linguistics major from the get-go.
> 
>> I had a part time job coding for graduate students in the Physical Chemistry
>> Dept (mostly FORTRAN for doing matrix calculations for their Quantum
>> Mechanics models) or various things for the CS Dept through Dr. Brown all
>> four years I attended as an undergraduate.
> 
>> I had no idea that having a CDC-6600 as your first computer was quite unusual.
> 
>> - Larry
> 
> You've just missed having some fun.  I work(ed) at Living Computers: Museum+Labs
> in Seattle for the last 17 years.  We restored a 6500 (originally at Purdue from
> 1967-1989, then in the Chippewa Falls Museum of Industry and Technology till
> 2011) and have given free accounts on it for several years.  Unfortunately, the
> museum is closing for 12-18 months (due to the effects of the pandemic on any
> museum and more especially on "touch everything" museums).

I saw that somewhere. I wish them, and you, the best of luck!

> 
> My friend who got me the museum job was an operator at the UTCC, but only after
> they had moved from the 6600 onto a Cyber.  He's retired back to Austin, which
> was home for him all along.
> 



-- 
Pete

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#211977 — Re: personal histories

On 6/12/2020 6:04 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
> You've just missed having some fun.  I work(ed) at Living Computers: Museum+Labs
> in Seattle for the last 17 years.  We restored a 6500 (originally at Purdue from
> 1967-1989, then in the Chippewa Falls Museum of Industry and Technology till
> 2011) and have given free accounts on it for several years.  Unfortunately, the
> museum is closing for 12-18 months (due to the effects of the pandemic on any
> museum and more especially on "touch everything" museums).
> 
> My friend who got me the museum job was an operator at the UTCC, but only after
> they had moved from the 6600 onto a Cyber.  He's retired back to Austin, which
> was home for him all along.
> 

That's a great job, and I hope they re-open the museum just as soon as possible.

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#211873

In article <rbtan8$tqk$3@newsreader4.netcologne.de>,
Thomas Koenig  <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
>I've been looking around a bit, but I cannot find which operating
>system introduced named files.

Good question.  CTSS had named files, I think in 1962.

Named files almost certainly predate disks. IBM operating systems had
(still have, I guess) an elaborate system for naming files on
magtapes. On OS you could put tape files in the catalog, just like
disk files, and if a job called for a file on a tape, it would tell
the operator to mount the tape.

Poking around at bitsavers, I see that the 7070 had tapes labelled
with filenames by 1960 and I presume it had named files when it had
disks or drums, too.

-- 
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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#211874

Can't say who invented it, but Honeywell had "tape monitors" that used named modules on tape, and the ability to search and load modules by name. I think their "card monitor" also did the same. It was probably something that everyone recognized as being advantageous/necessary.

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#211952

In article <rbtosd$1hjr$1@gal.iecc.com>, John Levine  <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>Good question.  CTSS had named files, I think in 1962.
>
>Named files almost certainly predate disks. IBM operating systems had
>(still have, I guess) an elaborate system for naming files on
>magtapes. On OS you could put tape files in the catalog, just like
>disk files, and if a job called for a file on a tape, it would tell
>the operator to mount the tape.

FLOW-MATIC from Univac (predecessor to COBOL) already had explicit
support for tape labels in 1957, in blocks at the beginning of the
tape drive which the run-time would check to insure that the right
tape was mounted -- and that tapes with portions of a file were
mounted in the right order if a file spanned more than one tape.

So, it's at least that old.

Robert Thau
rst@{ai,alum}.mit.edu
-- 
Robert Thau
rst@{ai,alum}.mit.edu

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#211885

On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:14:17 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:

> OS/360 certainly had them, as did EXEC II.  I would think that
> peole started using them as soon as discs with random access made
> their appearance - does anybody know more?

If so, the first disk with random access was the IBM RAMAC, so that should narrow 
down your search.

John Savard

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#211887

On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 12:53:44 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 7:14:17 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> 
> > OS/360 certainly had them, as did EXEC II.  I would think that
> > peole started using them as soon as discs with random access made
> > their appearance - does anybody know more?
> 
> If so, the first disk with random access was the IBM RAMAC, so that should narrow 
> down your search.

I checked, and instead people using the RAMAC system had to divide the disk up 
into ranges of track and sector numbers by hand.

Since IBM referred to a disk drive as a "disk file", what we call a file they 
termed a "data set". Named data sets would certainly have been in use at the 
point when disk drives were connected to computers running operating systems 
that restricted access to particular data sets to the users who were their 
owners. The 1301, an improved version of the RAMAC disk drive that had as many 
read heads as surfaces, was used as a peripheral on the 7090, so it is indeed 
quite possible IBM originated the named file condept, but I haven't been able to 
verify this.

John Savard

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#211888

One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.

John Savard

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#211889

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
> One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
> MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.

Which one?

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#211893

On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 1:35:19 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
> > One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
> > MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.

> Which one?

This article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file

Yes, some of the other ones I saw had no information relevant to your query 
although I might have expected them to.

John Savard

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#211895

On 6/12/2020 8:40 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 1:35:19 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>>> One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and
>>> MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.
> 
>> Which one?
> 
> This article:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file
> 
> Yes, some of the other ones I saw had no information relevant to your query
> although I might have expected them to.
> 
> John Savard
> 

I love that 1950's rhetoric quoted in that Wikipedia article, especially

"speeds intelligent solutions through mazes of mathematics"

  - Larry

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#211900

Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
> On 6/12/2020 8:40 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 1:35:19 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>>>> One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and
>>>> MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.
>> 
>>> Which one?
>> 
>> This article:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_file
>> 
>> Yes, some of the other ones I saw had no information relevant to your query
>> although I might have expected them to.
>> 
>> John Savard
>> 
> 
> I love that 1950's rhetoric quoted in that Wikipedia article, especially
> 
> "speeds intelligent solutions through mazes of mathematics"
> 
>  - Larry
> 

Actually , the article dates the “file system” to 1961, which is a slightly
different concept.

-- 
Pete

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#211971

Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes:
>Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>> One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
>> MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.
>
>Which one?

Large systems (B{567}XXX) most likely.  The B5000 preceeded the B3500.

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#211899

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
> MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.
> 
> John Savard
> 

Wow, that recently? I assume they have sources, but it seems awfully late
in the game.  

-- 
Pete

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#211920

On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 8:49:41 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

> > One Wikipedia article dates this to 1961, crediting both the Burroughs MCP and 
> > MIT's CTSS as coming up with it at around the same time.

> Wow, that recently? I assume they have sources, but it seems awfully late
> in the game.  

It does seem to me that named files on disk drives would still have been useful 
even on purely batch systems. So I, too, wonder if there may not have been 
something around earlier. However, IBM's RAMAC dates from 1956, so there isn't 
_too_ much room for earlier.

However, what about named files on tape? While LINCtape, the ancestor of 
DECtape, dates from 1962 or thereabouts, a perfectly ordinary computer system 
might have one magnetic tape drive with a tape on it that contains, say, an 
assembler, a COBOL compiler, and a FORTRAN compiler, and some way to advance the 
conventional (7-track!) tape to the right one of those.

John Savard

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