History
When IBM and Microsoft were codeveloping OS/2, they realized that File Allocation Tables, FATs, did not offer the features a modern OS would require, and Microsoft began developing the High Performance File System, codenamed Pinball.
Instead of coding it inside the kernel, as FAT was, Microsoft developed a "driver-based" Filesystem API that could allow them and other developers to add new filesystems to the kernel without needing to modify it.
When Microsoft stopped working on OS/2, IBM continued using the IFS interface and Microsoft implemented a similar one in Windows NT.
Read more about this topic: Installable File System
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)