1963 Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks

This vintage film features MIT Science Reporter John Fitch at the MIT Computation Center in an extended interview with MIT professor of computer science Fernando J. Corbato. The film was co-produced by WGBH (Boston) and MIT. The prime focus of the film is timesharing, one of the most important developments in computing, and one which has come in and out of favor several times over the last several decades as the dichotomy between remote and centrally-managed computing resources played out; the latest incarnation for centrally-managed computing resources is known as cloud computing. Timesharing as shown in this film, was a novel concept in the early 1960s. Driven by a desire to more efficiently use expensive computer resources while increasing the interactivity between user and computer (man and machine), timesharing was eventually taken up by industry in the form of special timesharing hardware for mainframe and minicomputer computer systems as well as in sophisticated operati…