Digital was an early champion of time-sharing systems.
But the time-sharing systems of the 1960's proved unable to scale up beyond a couple of hundred users.
They may be thought of as a "time-sharing" system for cars.
However, his own interest in developing time-sharing systems led him to underestimate the potential of personal computers.
Today, of course, virtually all operating systems are time-sharing systems.
This made a Sprite network appear as if it were a single large time-sharing system, or a single-system image.
The development of time-sharing systems led to a number of problems.
The first compiler was produced before the time-sharing system was ready.
The time-sharing systems at the time were slow and imposed many restrictions on its users.
That gradually evolved into time-sharing systems, where people had access to the computer through remote teletypewriters.