Well, ok, punch tape or paper tape is kind of "same difference" to me -- meaning, it wasn't mag tape nor disk pack (for the earliest "proto" operating systems). [ but yes I realize the speed and workflow of punch vs tape is quite different ]
And fair point, maybe IBM's lineage was the punch tape route (for CTSS), other (early OS software) maybe more likely using paper tape (Burroughs AOSP, CDC's SCOPE, and GE-645 with MULTICS). I've seen OS's loaded from vinyl records and reel-to-reel, just never imaged one being loaded from any kind of paper. :) But as far as I can tell, CTSS and Atlas Supervisor were probably "single digit installations". The first widely-deployed OS possibly was possibly CDC's scope (meaning, more than a few hundred installations). Even MULTICS had a fairly limited install base (as far as I can determine). -Steve . On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 1:47 PM Paul Koning <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Mar 1, 2026, at 2:34 AM, Steve Lewis via cctalk < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > > ... > > Anyway, apologies - it was just something that only recently occurred to > > me, that basically all of the original operating systems originated on > > punch cards: CTSS, Supervisor, AOSP, SCOPE, even MULTICs. > > That's certainly not true. It may be true for card-centric outfits like > IBM. I don't know what early DEC development looked like, but considering > the rarity of card handling equipment on DEC systems I would expect paper > tape. > > Early software for the Dutch machines I know was done on paper tape. In > some cases that involved punch equipment with custom-designed coding; for > example, the Electrologica X1 had a rudimentary assembler in ROM (along > with a BIOS) and source text was given to it on 5-channel paper tape, in a > code slightly above straight binary machine language. > > Its successor the X8 had paper tape I/O standard, and the standard > executable file loaders used paper tapes. Ditto the bootstrap. The famous > THE operating system was a paper tape batch system, with the OS image > supplied on tape (though I think at some point it was moved to magtape for > faster startup). No punched cards were seen there until the X8 was > replaced by a Burroughs 6800, circa 1974, and even that machine had paper > tape input to support all the applications that had the input data on paper > tape. My father's precision measurement lab (part of the ME department) > had instruments that punched the measurements onto paper tape, for later > processing by that central computer system. All that was in ALGOL, by the > way. > > paul > > >
