When I saw the subject line I thought maybe we'd get an interesting article about OS/360 or something, but then found an article about Macs; interesting but not expected.
Animats•1m ago
Right.
As far as I know, the first operating system to have threads was UNIVAC 1108 EXEC 8, first released in 1966.[1] They were called "activities". A program launched with one activity, and could start others with a FORK call. There were locks, with hardware support for an atomic Test and Set instruction. Activities had priorities, and there was a good scheduler. Threads exited with an EXIT call, and when the last thread exited, so did the program. No main thread. There were timed waits, explicit waits for an event, and even async I/O with callbacks. Multiprocessors were supported. In 1966.
tankenmate•17m ago
Animats•1m ago
As far as I know, the first operating system to have threads was UNIVAC 1108 EXEC 8, first released in 1966.[1] They were called "activities". A program launched with one activity, and could start others with a FORK call. There were locks, with hardware support for an atomic Test and Set instruction. Activities had priorities, and there was a good scheduler. Threads exited with an EXIT call, and when the last thread exited, so did the program. No main thread. There were timed waits, explicit waits for an event, and even async I/O with callbacks. Multiprocessors were supported. In 1966.
It's still in use, as OS/2200. [2]
[1] https://ia803206.us.archive.org/11/items/bitsavers_univac110...
[2] https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/collateral/pi-sheet/pi-060...