Also: written in a high level language (uncommon at the time), uniform structures and models for things like memory and IO, and many more laid out in the original Multics papers.
If Multics had been treated as a research project rather than being a plan to invent a ton of new stuff and build a system that would be deployed in volume, everybody would be singing its praises today.
> If Multics had been treated as a research project rather than being a plan to invent a ton of new stuff and build a system that would be deployed in volume, everybody would be singing its praises today.
I wonder if Multics had to be pitched to funders as "a plan to invent a ton of new stuff and build a system that would be deployed in volume" to obtain the level of funding needed for it to prove out its precepts. As a research project, it might not have had the impact that it did upon modern OS theory, design and implementation.
Even today, there is an incredibly strong averse reaction by funding agents to the software notion of "build one to throw away".
That was back in the early 60s, funded by ARPA as part of Project MAC. The “customers” were the kinds of people who cared about the rainbow books (hint: all government), though the science was open.
ARPA (later DARPA) funded a lot of things that were built under contract, not just pure research.
Most of project MAC was pure research and a lot of it is still fundamental and influential today.
If Multics had been treated as a research project rather than being a plan to invent a ton of new stuff and build a system that would be deployed in volume, everybody would be singing its praises today.