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The Multicians web site presents the story of the Multics operating system for people interested in the system's history,especiallyMulticians.The site's goals are to

preserve the technical ideas and advances of Multics so others don't need to reinvent them.
record the history of Multics, its builders, and its users before we all forget.
give credit where it's due for important innovations.
remember some good times and good people.

The Multicians web site contains 488 HTML files (see theSite Map) comprising over 540K lines,1797 PDF files, and 670 graphic images.The site has benefited from the contributions of many authors. Contributions are invited: if you have a correction, fact, date, name, anecdote, or picture, please share it with Multicians everywhere by sending mail to the editor.

The late Harry Reed and Charles Anthony reached a major milestone on theMultics simulator on Saturday 08 November, 2014. Theirhardware simulator booted Multics MR 12.5 software, came to operator command level, entered admin mode, created a small PL/I program, compiled and executed it, and shut down.

DPS8M Simulator Release 3.1.0 is now available. See the

Release Notes. There have been multiple updates to Multics software for the simulator: the latest version is

MR 12.8, August 2023. Anyone can try out a simulated Multics or install the simulator on their own computer.

Open Source for Multics is hosted at MIT, courtesy of Bull HN. It is available "for any purpose and without fee" provided that the copyright notice and historical background are preserved in all copies.

Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was a mainframe time-sharing operating system begun in 1965 and used until 2000. Multics began as a research project and was an important influence on operating system development. The system became a commercial product sold by Honeywell to education, government, and industry.

Multics was a prototype of aComputer Utility, providing secure computing to remote users at their terminals. Multicians still miss the elegant, consistent, and powerful programming environment; some Multics features are only now being added to contemporary systems.

Recent Changes

02/08: Multicians: Dave Farber died Feb 7, 2026 .
12/02: Multicians: Jim Weeldreyer died October 2, 2025 .; Multicians: New email for Jeffrey Johnson.
11/24: Multicians: New email for Gary Dixon.
11/10: Multicians: Ed Thelen died Sep 2024.; Bibliography: Added links to 5 technical reports from Project Guardian by MITRE, SRI, and Honeywell, thanks to Steve Lipner.

all changes

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