ABSTRACT
By the mid-1960s data-processing computers for business had become well established. The first time-sharing computer system originated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1961, initially as a way of easing the difficulties that faculty and students were beginning to encounter when trying to develop programs. Up to the mid-1960s, although the time-sharing idea caught on at a few academic institutions and research organizations, the great majority of computer users continued to use computers in the traditional way. Between 1965 and 1975, the introduction of integrated circuit electronics reduced the cost of computer power by a factor of a hundred, undermining the prime economic justification for time-sharing. Many computer scientists were caught up by the dream that artificial intelligence (AI) would soon rival the human intellect in areas such as problem solving, pattern recognition, and chess playing. By 1969, when the term minicomputer first came into popular use, small computers were a major sector of the computer industry.
