GEORGE (operating system)

GEORGE was the name given to a series of operating systems released by International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in the 1960s, for the ICT 1900 series of computers. These included GEORGE 1, GEORGE 2, GEORGE 3, and GEORGE 4.

Initially, the 1900 series machines, like the Ferranti-Packard 6000 on which they were based, ran a simple operating system known as Executive, which allowed the system operator to load and run programs from a Teletype Model 33 ASR based system console.

In December 1964, ICT set up an Operating Systems Branch to develop a new operating system for the 1906/7. The branch was initially staffed with people being released by the end of work on the OMP operating system for the Ferranti Orion. The initial design of the new system, named George after the head of the Basic Programming Division George E. Felton, was based on ideas from the Orion and the spooling system of the Atlas computer. In public it was claimed that George stood for GEneral ORGanisational Environment, but contemporary sources say that was a backronym.

In July 1965, a team from ICT was present at a seminar at NPL describing the CTSS operating system developed for MIT's Project MAC. They decided that the ICT would need to provide multi-access facilities, known to ICT as MOP, "Multiple Online Processing". In November 1965 H. P. Goodman, head of the Operating Systems Branch attended the Fall Joint Computer Conference in Las Vegas where plans for Multics were initially described. Some of the Multics features discussed influenced future development of George, notably the tree structured filestore.

Towards the end of 1965, ICT marketing requested that a simpler operating system be made available quickly, especially for the smaller members of the range. It was decided that two smaller systems, known as George 1 and George 2 be released rapidly, and the larger operating system was renamed George 3.