Editing Project Genie

{{for |other projects of a similar name |Genie (disambiguation)}}
'''Project Genie''' was a [[computer]] research project started in 1964 at the [[University of California, Berkeley]]. 
It produced an early [[time-sharing]] system including the [[Berkeley Timesharing System]], which was then commercialized as the [[SDS 940]].

==History==
Project Genie was funded by [[J. C. R. Licklider]], the head of ARPA's [[Information Processing Techniques Office]] at that time.  The project was a smaller counterpart to [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]]'s [[Project MAC]].

The [[Scientific Data Systems]] SDS 940 was created by modifying an SDS 930 24-bit commercial computer so that it could be used for timesharing. The work was funded by [[DARPA|ARPA]] and directed by Melvin W. Pirtle and Wayne Lichtenberger at UC Berkeley. [[Butler Lampson]], [[Chuck Thacker]], and [[L. Peter Deutsch]] were among the young technical leaders of that project.<ref>{{cite web |title= Project Genie: Berkeley's piece of the computer revolution |publisher= [[University of California, Berkeley]] Engineering |author= Paul Spinrad and Patti Meagher |url= http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publications/forefront/archive/forefront-fall-2007/features/berkeley2019s-piece-of-the-computer-revolution |accessdate= April 16, 2011 |url-status= dead |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20110719144454/http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publications/forefront/archive/forefront-fall-2007/features/berkeley2019s-piece-of-the-computer-revolution |archivedate= July 19, 2011 }}</ref>  When completed and in service, the first 940 ran reliably in spite of its array of tricky mechanical issues such as a huge disk drive driven by hydraulic arms. It served about forty or fifty users at a time and still managed to drive a graphics subsystem that was quite capable for its time. <!-- [[Scientific Data Systems]], was later named ''Xerox Data Systems''. -->

When SDS realized the value of the time sharing system, and that the software was in the [[public domain]] (funded by the US federal government), they came back to Berkeley and collected enough information to begin manufacturing. Because  SDS manufacturing was overloaded with the 9 series production and the startup of the Sigma Series production, it could not incorporate the 940 modifications into the standard production line.  Instead, production of the 940s  was turned over to the Systems Engineering Department, which manufactured systems customised to user requirements.  To produce a 940, the Systems Engineering Department ordered a 930 from SDS manufacturing, installed the modifications developed by the Berkeley engineers, and shipped machine to the SDS customer as a 940.

Project Genie pioneered several computer hardware techniques, such as commercial time-sharing which allowed end-user programming in [[machine language]], separate protected user modes, memory paging, and [[protected memory]]. Concepts from Project Genie influenced the development of the [[TENEX (operating system)|TENEX]] operating system for the [[PDP-10]], and [[Unix]], which inherited the concept of [[Fork (system call)|process forking]] from it<ref name=" Ritchie">{{cite journal |last1=Ritchie |first1=Dennis M. |authorlink1=Dennis Ritchie |last2=Thompson |first2=Ken |title=The UNIX Time-Sharing System |journal=Bell System Tech. J. |volume=57 |issue=6 |pages=1905–1929 |date=July 1978 |url=https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/cacm.pdf |accessdate = 22 April 2014 |doi=10.1002/j.1538-7305.1978.tb02136.x|citeseerx=10.1.1.112.595 }}</ref> (Unix co-creator [[Ken Thompson]] worked on an SDS 940 while at Berkeley).  An SDS 940 [[mainframe computer|mainframe]] was used by [[Douglas Engelbart]]'s [[NLS (computer system)|OnLine System]] at the [[SRI International|Stanford Research Institute]] and was the first computer used by the Community Memory Project at Berkeley.

In 1968, Lampson also helped design a different timesharing system at Berkeley: Cal TSS for the [[CDC 6400]] with Extended Core Storage. Lampson was only involved until 1969,<ref>{{cite web |title=An Overview of the CAL Time-Sharing System |author= Butler Lampson |author-link= Butler Lampson |publisher= University of California |date= October 1969 |url= http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univOfCalBerkeley/Cal_TSS_Overview_Oct69.pdf |accessdate= April 20, 2011 }}</ref> but Cal TSS continued until 1971.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Postmortem for a Time-Sharing System. |author= Howard Ewing Sturgis |publisher= Xerox Palo Alto Research Center |date= January 1974 |url= http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/parc/techReports/CSL-74-1_A_Postmortem_for_a_Timesharing_System.pdf |accessdate= May 20, 2021}}</ref>
Several members of project Genie such as Pirtle, Thacker, Deutsch and Lampson left UCB to form the Berkeley Computer Corporation (BCC), which produced one prototype, the BCC-500.<ref>{{cite web |title=Berkeley Computer Corporation |author= Butler Lampson |author-link= Butler Lampson |publisher= Microsoft Research |url= http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/blampson/Systems.html#bcc|accessdate= April 16, 2011 }}</ref>
After BCC went bankrupt after its funding from the computer mainframe lessor Data Processing Financial & General (DPF&G) suddenly stopped, the BCC-500 was transferred to the [[University of Hawaii]], where it continued in use through the 1970s.<ref>{{cite web |title= Design Features of the BCC 500 CPU |author= Charles F. Wall |work= Technical Report R-1 |publisher= University of Hawaii  |date= January 3, 1974 |url= http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univOfHawaii/R-1_BCC500_DesignFeatures_Rev_Mar74.pdf }}</ref> It became part of the [[ALOHAnet]].<ref>{{cite journal |author= Frank F. Kuo |date= January 1995 |volume=25 |title= The ALOHA system |journal= ACM Computer Communication Review |url= http://ccr.sigcomm.org/archive/1995/jan95/ccr-9501-kuo.pdf }}</ref>

Several BCC employees became the core of [[PARC (company)|Xerox PARC]]'s computer research group (Deutsch, Lampson and Thacker) in 1970. Lichtenberger went to the University of Hawaii, and was an early employee at [[Cisco Systems]].<ref>{{cite web |title= ECE alumnus Wayne Lichtenberger donates a piece of computing history to the University |publisher= [[University of Illinois]] Engineering |author= Shawn Adderly |date= November 29, 2010 |url= http://www.ece.illinois.edu/mediacenter/article.asp?id=1179 |accessdate= April 16, 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110723133804/http://www.ece.illinois.edu/mediacenter/article.asp?id=1179 |archive-date= July 23, 2011 |url-status= dead }}</ref>

Pirtle became technical director for the [[ILLIAC IV]] project at NASA [[Ames Research Center]].<ref>{{cite web |title= Oral History of Charles (Chuck) Thacker |author= Interviewed by Al Kossow |date= August 29, 2007 |work= Reference no: X4148.2008 |publisher= [[Computer History Museum]] |url= http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Oral_History/102658126.05.01.acc.pdf |accessdate= April 20, 2011 |url-status= dead |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20110811174603/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Oral_History/102658126.05.01.acc.pdf |archivedate= August 11, 2011 }}</ref>

==See also==
*[[DARPA]]
*[[Berkeley Timesharing System]]
*[[Timeline of operating systems]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sds/9xx/940/ucbProjectGenie/ Project Genie Documentation]

[[Category:DARPA]]
[[Category:1964 establishments in California]]
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley]]
[[Category:Time-sharing]]