Owen R. Mock was a computer software designer and programmer who pioneered computer operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s in the 1950s. In 1954 Mock was part of a group of programmers at the Los Angeles division of North American Aviation

North American Aviation

North American Aviation was a major US aerospace manufacturer, responsible for a number of historic aircraft, including the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, the X-15 rocket plane, and the XB-70, as well as Apollo Command and Service...

 (NAA) who developed the PACT

PACT

PACT was a series of compilers for the IBM 701 and IBM 704 scientific computers. Their development was conducted jointly by IBM and a committee of customers starting in 1954. PACT I was developed for the 701, and PACT IA for the 704. The emphasis in that early generation of compilers was minization...

 series of compilers for the IBM 701

IBM 701

The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...

 computer. In December 1955, Mock's group installed in the IBM 701 the "North American 701 Monitor" which was the first operating system to be in operation.

General Motors Research (GMR) also had an IBM 701 and used the compilers developed by Mock's group. When Robert L. Patrick at GMR designed a non-stop multi-user batch processing

Batch processing

Batch processing is execution of a series of programs on a computer without manual intervention.Batch jobs are set up so they can be run to completion without manual intervention, so all input data is preselected through scripts or command-line parameters...

 operating system for use on the next generation computer (IBM 704

IBM 704

The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in 1954. The 704 was significantly improved over the IBM 701 in terms of architecture as well as implementations which were not compatible with its predecessor.Changes from the 701 included...

), Mock's group at NAA and George Ryckman's group at GMR joined forces to develop Robert Patrick's design for the IBM 704. This GM-NAA I/O

GM-NAA I/O

The GM-NAA I/O input/output system of General Motors and North American Aviation was the first operating system for the IBM 704 computer.It was created in 1956 by Robert L. Patrick of General Motors Research and Owen Mock of North American Aviation...

software was the first operating system for the 704 and began production in 1956.

Publications

• Owen R. Mock, Logical Organization of the PACT I Compiler, J. ACM, vol. 3, No. 4, pages 279-287 (October, 1956).
• Owen R. Mock, The Share 709 System: Input-Output Buffering, J. ACM, vol. 6, No. 2, pages 145-151, (April, 1959).