A History of Mainframes

A Brief History of the Mainframe World

For 48 years, mainframe technology has evolved to meet business needs
June 20, 2012 | BY AL GREGA
Editor’s note: This is the first in a four-part series about the IBM’s mainframe’s past, present and future.
For more, see "Myth Busting," "Not Your Father's Mainframe" and "The Next Generation."
Read more

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
By Rich Arzoomanian, JUNE 26, 2009
Website

Mainframe computer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
website

IBM Mainframes – 45+ Years of Evolution
Jim Elliott, Consulting Sales Specialist – System z
IBM Canada Ltd.
Reports of the death of the mainframe were premature
PDF

History of IBM mainframe operating systems

The history of operating systems running on IBM mainframes is a notable chapter of history of mainframe operating systems, because of IBM's long-standing position as the world's largest hardware supplier of mainframe computers.

Arguably the operating systems which IBM supplied to customers for use on its early mainframes have seldom been very innovative, except for the virtual machine systems beginning with CP-67. But the company's well-known reputation for preferring proven technology has generally given potential users the confidence to adopt new IBM systems fairly quickly. IBM's current mainframe operating systems, z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, and z/TPF, are backwards compatible successors to operating systems introduced in the 1960s, although of course they have been improved in many ways.

Both IBM-supplied operating systems and those supplied by others are discussed here, if notably used on IBM mainframes.

Timeline of operating systems

This article presents a timeline of events in the history of computer operating systems from 1951 to the current day. For a narrative explaining the overall developments, see the History of operating systems.