hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (06/03/87)
In article <577@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@pnet02.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >As far as I know, XEROX PARC just invented the hardware. Xerox El Sugundo >"invented all this neat stuff". I don't think so. My understanding has always been that both hardware and software came out of Alan Kay's Dynabook project at PARC. The idea was to create the ultimate computer, which would be portable, powerful, easy enough for a child of five to use (literally), and capable of 100% replacing use of paper and conventional books (hence the name "Dynabook"). Many ideas were borrowed from elsewhere, such as Doug Englebart's mouse, but putting it all together into the now-familiar bitmap/window/icon/mouse/etc environment, plus the Smalltalk language, and the necessity of building the hardware you mention...all this was at PARC. Perhaps El Sugundo had something to do with the hardware? BTW one of the key parts of the whole approach was to do carefully controlled studies about the best way to make a computer behave so that a child of five could use the thing. They *always* tested their stuff on children, for years, repeatedly redesigning the software and hardware to make it more intuitive. So those of you with five year olds that love your Amiga, you can thank Alan Kay and his brilliant team, who took every possible step to ensure that that would be true of this technology. The Amiga, unfortunately, only represents the *basics* of what they invented. Someday I hope to have on my Amiga the environment they had in the 70's in their lab. Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatcher hatcher@ingres.berkeley.EDU