> real time systems came to refer to computers that operated on the opposite of batch computing. The user could interact with the system in "real time", rather

> real time systems came to refer to computers that operated on the opposite of batch computing. The user could interact with the system in "real time", rather than having to wait hours after submitting the job for the results. As someone who grew up with those systems, this is a major mis-statement of the terms. In the early days the terms were "batch", "online", or online's near-synonym "interactive". Real-time has always meant bounded-latency and guaranteed execution since the earliest days, to actual computer systems engineers. It is a true statement that many people use the term differently today - much to the detriment of precise communication between humans. But there was never any confusion about the term until perhaps the 90's and widespread interactive screen-based applications.