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sourceThe ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is arguably the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was created for a very specific purpose: to rapidly compute firing tables for the military.
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source1956, GM-NAA I/O: Developed by Robert L. Patrick of General Motors for use on their IBM 704 mainframe.
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sourceThe operating systems of the 1960's were also batch processing systems, but they were able to take better advantage of the computer's resources by running several jobs at once.
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source1961, MCP (Master Control Program): Developed by Burroughs Corporations for their B5000 mainframe. But is still used.
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source1966, DOS/360: After years of being strictly in the hardware business, IBM ventured into the OS.
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source1969, Unix: Developed by AT&T Bell Labs programmers Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna. It gained widespread acceptance first within the large AT&T company, and later by colleges and universities.
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1973, CP/M (Control Program/Monitor (later re-purposed as “Control Program for Microcomputers”): Developed by Greg Kildall as a side project for his company Digital Research. CP/M became a popular OS in the 1970′s.
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sourceThe first personal computer to hit the market was the ALTAIR, which came in a kit for hobbyists. But the ALTAIR didn't have onboard memory -- it could just execute simple commands.
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source1977, BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution): Developed by the University of California, Berkeley. BSD is a Unix variant based on early versions of Unix from Bell Labs.
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source1981, MS-DOS: Developed by Microsoft for the IBM PC’s. It was the first widely available Operating Systems for home users. In 1985, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, which popularized the Operating System even more.
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source1982, SunOS: Developed by Sun Microsystems, SunOS was based on BSD. It was a very popular Unix variant.
