AbstractThis paper describes the mechanism used to schedule jobs and control machine use on the IBM 370/165 at Cambridge University, England. The same algorithm is currently being used in part at the University of Bradford, and implementations are in progress at the Universities of Leeds, Salford and Liverpool for the ICL 1900 series machines. The mechanism relies on allocating a share of the machine to each user (or project), and then varying the turnround time for jobs according to whether the project in question is over‐ or under‐using its share of the machine. The approach is believed to be an original one, having a number of advantages over more conventional scheduling and control algorit