Program interrupt on the Univac scientific computer
Jules Mersel · 1956
In the use of high-speed digital computers the general situation has been to have the program or the programmer at the console in sole control of what the machine is doing. In recent years, however, a situation has often occurred where a program, so to speak, has only been lent the machine until a higher priority problem is ready to go on the machine. At these times the machine was stopped, the low priority problem was taken off the machine, and the high priority problem was allowed to run. Though such a situation is preferable to having a computer idle while it awaits the high priority problem, the time lost in getting the old problem off and the new problem on has been an unfortunate loss.