View source for WAITS

{{about|the operating system||Waits (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox OS
| name                   = WAITS
| logo                   = 
| screenshot             = 
| caption                = 
| developer              = [[Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory]]
| source_model           = 
| kernel_type            = 
| supported_platforms    = [[PDP-6]], [[PDP-10]]
| ui                     = 
| family                 = DEC OS family
| released               = {{Start date and age|1967}}
| latest_release_version = 
| latest_release_date    = 
| latest_test_version    = 
| latest_test_date       = 
| marketing_target       = [[Mainframe computer]]
| programmed_in          = 
| prog_language          = 
| language               = [[English language|English]]
| updatemodel            = 
| package_manager        = 
| working_state          = Historic
| license                = 
| website                = 
}}
'''WAITS''' is a heavily modified variant of [[Digital Equipment Corporation]]'s Monitor [[operating system]] (later renamed to, and better known as, "[[TOPS-10]]") for the [[PDP-6]] and [[PDP-10]] mainframe computers, used at the [[Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory]] (SAIL)<ref>{{cite journal |title=Research in Progress |journal=AI Magazine |date=Winter 1980–81 |volume=2 |issue=1 |page=28 |url=https://aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/96/95 |access-date=November 6, 2025}}</ref> from the mid-1960s up until 1991; the mainframe computer it ran on also went by the name of "SAIL".

==Overview==
There was never an "official" expansion of WAITS, but a common variant was "West-coast Alternative to [[Incompatible Timesharing System|ITS]]"; another variant was "Worst Acronym Invented for a Timesharing System". The name was endorsed by the SAIL community in a public vote choosing among alternatives.  Two of the other contenders were SAINTS ("Stanford AI New Timesharing System") and SINNERS ("Stanford Incompatible Non-New Extensively Rewritten System"), proposed by the systems programmers. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormous indirect influence.
<!-- Historical details about choosing of name added to Wikipedia by Ken Shoemake, who proposed the name WAITS and so ought to know. ;-) Further detail added by Mark Crispin, who was also there. Citations still needed, sigh -->

WAITS alumni at [[PARC (company)|Xerox PARC]] and elsewhere also played major roles in the developments that led to the [[Xerox Star]], the [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]], and the [[SUN workstation]] (later sold by [[Sun Microsystems]]).

The early screen modes of [[Emacs]], for example, were directly inspired by WAITS' "E" editor – one of a family of editors that were the first to do [[real-time editing]], in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there.

The system also featured an unusual level of support for what is now called [[multimedia]] computing, allowing analog audio and video signals (including TV and radio) to be switched to programming terminals. This switching capability for terminal video even allowed users in separate offices to view and type on the same virtual terminal, or a single user to instantly switch among multiple full virtual terminals.

Also invented there were "[[bucky bit]]s" - thus, the "Alt" key on the [[IBM PC]] is a WAITS legacy.{{Citation needed|reason=the ASR-33 teletype in 1963 had an ALT key, and no bucky bits, i think it was OOB|date=April 2024}}

One WAITS feature very notable in pre-Web days was a news-wire search engine called NS (for News Service) that allowed WAITS [[Hacker (hobbyist)|hackers]] to instantly find, store and be notified about selected [[Associated Press|AP]] and [[The New York Times|New York Times]] news-wire stories by doing searches using arbitrary combinations of words.  News story retrieval by such search was instantaneous because each story was automatically indexed by all its words when it came in over the wire.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{JargonFile}}

==External links==
*[http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html The autobiography of SAIL]
*[https://foldoc.org/?WAITS FOLDOC description]
*[https://www.saildart.org/ SAILDART archive]
*[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PDP-10/waits/master/doc/SAILDART_Prolegomenon_2016.pdf SAILDART Prolegomenon, 2016 edition]

{{DEC operating systems}}
{{Time-sharing operating systems}}

[[Category:Time-sharing operating systems]]
[[Category:1967 software]]