Company:Allen-Babcock
Allen-Babcock Computing was founded in Los Angeles in 1964 by James D. Babcock and Michael Jane Allen Babcock to take advantage of the fast-growing market for computer time-sharing services.[1]
In 1966 the company developed "RUSH" (Remote Users of Shared Hardware), an interactive dialect of PL/I.[2] Between 1965 and 1966 they assisted in the development of Conversational Programming System (CPS), a timesharing system that ran under OS/360, under contract to IBM.[3] CPS was a subset of RUSH prepared by IBM with the permission of Allen-Babcock.
The significant technological outcome was the first idea to alter the hardware of an IBM computer to enhance the performance of a time-sharing system on IBM hardware.[4] This was the first time such firmware was programmed by software developers for this purpose. Later tests showed increases of throughput by as much as 70%. Several such altered System/360 Model 50s were delivered to other IBM customers.
In 1969 Allen-Babcock held a 3 percent share of the time-sharing services market.[1]
During the early 70's Allen-Babcock leased copies of the RUSH software to several industry owners of the IBM 360 series computer systems. One such company was Procter & Gamble. These lessees sought to use RUSH internally to provide their companies access to time sharing on their internal networks.
In 1975 Allen-Babcock was acquired by Tymshare.[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Allen-Babcock Computing, Inc.". Lehman Brothers Collection-Twentieth Century Business Archives. http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/chrono.html?company=allen_babcock_computing_inc.
- ↑ Rosin, Robert (January 1969). "PL/I Implementation Survey". PL/I Bulletin (7): 35–42. http://teampli.net/PLI_Bulletins/PLI_Bulletin_7.pdf#page=9.
- ↑ Rochester, Nathaniel (May 23, 1966). Conversational Programming System Progress Report (PDF) (Technical report). Retrieved 2008-07-29.
- ↑ "Specification: EVAL Microprogram". March 7, 1966. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/allen-babcock/cps/Draft_Eval_Microprogram_Mar66.pdf.
- ↑ "Report to the Computer History Museum on the Information Technology Corporate Histories Project Time‐Sharing Sector". https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2012/10/102746517-05-01-acc.pdf#page=227.
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