Alexander, Michael T.

Michael T. Alexander joined the University of Michigan's Computing Center in 1965 as a Research Assistant.

In the mid-1960s, the staff of the UM Computing Center relied on IBM 7090 hardware and an operating system, the UM Executive System (UMES), of their own design. The limited memory available to the IBM 7090 and the high cost of its operation demanded the use of "batch processing," in which programs were run immediately after one another with minimal human intervention. Batch processing ensured that the university's expensive computing resources were used cost-effectively, but did so at the price of requiring users to wait hours or days for project results. However, in 1966 new developments in virtual memory architecture inspired the staff of the Computing Center to draft a proposal for a terminal-oriented, timesharing operating system that would allow users to interact with their programs and receive immediate results.[1]

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