Multics /muhl'tiks/ n. [from "MULTiplexed Information and Computing
   Service"] An early time-sharing {operating system} co-designed by a
   consortium including MIT, GE, and Bell Laboratories as a successor to
   {CTSS}. The design was first presented in 1965, planned for operation in
   1967, first operational in 1969, and took several more years to achieve
   respectable performance and stability.

   Multics was very innovative for its time -- among other things, it
   provided a hierarchical file system with access control on individual
   files and introduced the idea of treating all devices uniformly as
   special files. It was also the first OS to run on a symmetric
   multiprocessor, and the only general-purpose system to be awarded a B2
   security rating by the NSA (see {Orange Book}).

   Bell Labs left the development effort in 1969 after judging that
   {second-system effect} had bloated Multics to the point of practical
   unusability. Honeywell commercialized Multics in 1972 after buying out
   GE's computer group, but it was never very successful: at its peak in
   the 1980s, there were between 75 and 100 Multics sites, each a
   multi-million dollar mainframe.

   One of the former Multics developers from Bell Labs was Ken Thompson,
   and {Unix} deliberately carried through and extended many of Multics'
   design ideas; indeed, Thompson described the very name `Unix' as `a weak
   pun on Multics'. For this and other reasons, aspects of the Multics
   design remain a topic of occasional debate among hackers. See also
   {brain-damaged} and {GCOS}.

   MIT ended its development association with Multics in 1977. Honeywell
   sold its computer business to Bull in the mid 80s, and development on
   Multics was stopped in 1988. Four Multics sites were known to be still
   in use as late as 1998, but the last one (a Canadian military site) was
   decomissioned in November 2000. There is a Multics page at
   `http://www.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/tvv/multics.html'.


Source: The Jargon File

MULTICS
     MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service (OS)
     
     
Source: Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms