Quoted in the paper, Bruse Moncreiff of Prudential Insurance, writing in 1955 to C.W. Adams:
> I have turned my attention to the problem of the day-to-day operation of an automatic data processor. The things that annoy programmers the most are operators, so I am attempting to all but program him out of existence. There are certain phases of his work, mostly involving manual dexterity, which of necessity have been preserved. I have tried to remove all the thinking from his job, since this is what people do least efficiently. I like to think of this proposed routine as an automatic supervisor rather than operator since it will be telling the human operator what to do.
I haven't read this yet but if history of OSes piques your interest I would recommend reading https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1303.PDF by Dijkstra. In this he talks about Dekkers solution, semaphores, and the invention of the interrupt.
Nice to see this paper framed as "Humanities and Social Sciences" and history of science rather than specifically computer science. Potentially a broader audience and applying a historical/social perspective rather than a more technical one.
> I have turned my attention to the problem of the day-to-day operation of an automatic data processor. The things that annoy programmers the most are operators, so I am attempting to all but program him out of existence. There are certain phases of his work, mostly involving manual dexterity, which of necessity have been preserved. I have tried to remove all the thinking from his job, since this is what people do least efficiently. I like to think of this proposed routine as an automatic supervisor rather than operator since it will be telling the human operator what to do.