Very steadily, right now, businesses are revolutionizing their accounting, information, and production systems. Thousands of applications throughout the world specify rather startling, advances in a wide range of specific àreas of human endeavor such as automatic laboratories (LINC); fully automated manufacturing facilities (numerical control); family-connected in-home information utilities (TV cable services); and others too numerous to list in this section of the text. It thus appears essential that students, managers, accountants, scientists, teachers, manufacturers, and all alert people become acquainted with terms, concepts, procedures, and applications of on-line real-time time sharing systems (OLRT-TSS). 

眼下，各企业正在扎扎实实地对其会计、情报和生产等系统进行改革。全世界成千上万种的应用说明，在人类为之努力工作的、范围广泛的专门领域内已取得了相当惊人的进展，例如自动化实验室(LINC)、全自动化的加工设备（数控）、连接家庭的家用信息公共设施（电视电报服务)，以及多得在本文本节所无法列举的其他进展。由此看来，学生、经理、会计员、科学家、教师、加工制造商以及一切机敏的人们都必须逐步熟悉联机实时分时系统（OLRT-TSS）的有关术语、概念、过程和应用。

A very brief conceptual introduction to time sharing is not an easy task because the term has already become so generalized that it has a great variety of meanings to scores of interesting groups and wide ranges of intelligence levels in such groups. It might best be developed by listing its logical components: simultaneity——a variable number of people can use the computer at essentially the same time; independence——the programs being handled by the system are operated independently of one another without risk of being intermixed or having security breached; immediacy——all requests for computer response receive that response within seconds (or less) of the completion of the required computation, and most often before "action deadlines" occur; spatial unlimitability——missiles millions of miles away have operated in real-time; and, earth-bound time-sharing users can communicate with the computer by means of teletype, visual displays (cathode-ray tubes) and scores of other input/output devices which are not generally in close proximity to the central computer, and can be continents away. Time sharing is really the utilization of time.

要对分时这个概念作很简明的介绍不是件容易的事情，因为这个术语已经变得非常笼统，以致对几十个专业团体以及这些团体里智力水平高低不一的人来说，它具有各种各样不同的意义。也许最好还是通过列举这个术语的逻辑成分来加以阐明：同时性——不同数目的人能在基本相同的时间内使用计算机；独立性——系统正在处理的程序可以彼此独立地操作，而没有互相混合或破坏安全的危险；即时性——一切要计算机回答的请求，都可在完成所需要计算的几秒钟甚至更短的时间内得到回答，而且多半是在“作用期限”到来之前就能得到回答；空间无限性——数百万英里之外的导弹一直是在实时内运行的；此外，陆地上的分时用户能够使用通常不在中央计算机附近而可能远在几大洲之外的电传打字机、可视显示装置（阴极射线管）和大量其他输入/输出设备同中央机进行通信。分时确实是充分利用时间。

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