Well into the 1980s, most users only had simple character-mode terminals that precluded multiple windows, so they could only work on one task at a time. The C shell's job control allowed the user to suspend the current activity and create a new instance of the C shell, called a job, by typing codice_9. The user could then switch back and forth between jobs using the fg command. The active job was said to be in the foreground. Other jobs were said to be either suspended (stopped) or running in the background.