Editing Time-sharing (section)

===Development===
Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, [[computer terminal]]s were multiplexed onto large institutional [[mainframe computer]]s ([[centralized computing]] systems), which in many implementations sequentially polled the terminals to see whether any additional data was available or action was requested by the computer user. Later technology in interconnections were [[interrupt]] driven, and some of these used parallel data transfer technologies such as the [[IEEE 488]] standard. Generally, computer terminals were utilized on college properties in much the same places as ''[[desktop computer]]s'' or ''[[personal computer]]s'' are found today. In the earliest days of personal computers, many were in fact used as particularly smart terminals for time-sharing systems.

DTSS's creators wrote in 1968 that "any response time which averages more than 10 seconds destroys the illusion of having one's own computer".<ref name="dtss196810">{{cite journal | url=http://dtss.dartmouth.edu/sciencearticle/index.html | title=Dartmouth Time-Sharing |author1=Kemeny, John G. |author2=Kurtz, Thomas E. | journal=Science | date=11 October 1968 | volume=162 | issue=3850 | pages=223–228| doi=10.1126/science.162.3850.223 | pmid=5675464 | bibcode=1968Sci...162..223K | url-access=subscription }}</ref> Conversely, timesharing users thought that their terminal was the computer,<ref name="ncc1974">{{Cite web |url=http://dtss.dartmouth.edu/transcript.php |title=TRANSCRIPTS OF 1974 National Computer Conference Pioneer Day Session |website=Dartmouth Time Sharing System |publisher=Dartmouth College |year=1974}}</ref> and unless they received a bill for using the service, rarely thought about how others shared the computer's resources, such as when a large JOSS application caused [[paging]] for all users. The ''JOSS Newsletter'' often asked users to reduce storage usage.<ref name=marks197112>{{cite tech report
 |url=https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R918.pdf
 |title=The JOSS Years: Reflections on an experiment
 |last=Marks |first=Shirley
 |date=December 1971
 |publisher=Rand
 |pages=32-33
 |access-date = 2019-06-19
}}</ref> Time-sharing was nonetheless an efficient way to share a large computer. {{asof|1972}} DTSS supported more than 100 simultaneous users. Although more than 1,000 of the 19,503 jobs the system completed on "a particularly busy day" required ten seconds or more of computer time, DTSS was able to handle the jobs because 78% of jobs needed one second or less of computer time. About 75% of 3,197 users used their terminal for 30 minutes or less, during which they used less than four seconds of computer time. A football simulation, among [[early mainframe games]] written for DTSS, used less than two seconds of computer time during the 15 minutes of real time for playing the game.<ref name="kemeny1972">{{Cite book |last=Kemeny |first=John G. |url=https://archive.org/details/mancomputer00keme/page/32/mode/2up?view=theater |title=Man and the Computer |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |year=1972 |location=New York |pages=32-37, 41-42 |isbn=9780684130095 |language=en-US |lccn=72-1176}}</ref> With the rise of microcomputing in the early 1980s, time-sharing became less significant, because individual microprocessors were sufficiently inexpensive that a single person could have all the [[CPU time]] dedicated solely to their needs, even when idle.

However, the Internet brought the general concept of time-sharing back into popularity. Expensive corporate server farms costing millions can host thousands of customers all sharing the same common resources. As with the early serial terminals, web sites operate primarily in bursts of activity followed by periods of idle time. This bursting nature permits the service to be used by many customers at once, usually with no perceptible communication delays, unless the servers start to get very busy.