peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (06/20/89)
In article <41604@bbn.COM>, mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) writes: > 3) The Mac solved the user interface problem. It didn't perfect it. The Xerox Star solved the user interface problem. The Mac took this solution and tried to cram it into a 128K box. Peices broke off. Now, today's Mac II has more power than the Xerox Star... but it's still crippled by the requirements of that 128K box. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: uunet.uu.net!ficc!peter, peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Personal: ...!texbell!sugar!peter, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com.
sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock) (06/22/89)
From article <4627@ficc.uu.net>, by peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva): > In article <41604@bbn.COM>, mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) writes: >> 3) The Mac solved the user interface problem. It didn't perfect it. > > The Xerox Star solved the user interface problem. The Mac took this > solution and tried to cram it into a 128K box. Alan Kay (working at Xerox) solved the user interface problem. His machine was the Dynabook which was available as early as 1973. The Xerox Star was introduced about a year after the Mac. It is a shame that people thought $10,000 was too high a price to to pay for a state of the art machine (the Lisa). Sean Brunnock
steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) (06/23/89)
In article <13929@swan.ulowell.edu> sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock) writes: >From article <4627@ficc.uu.net>, by peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva): >> In article <41604@bbn.COM>, mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) writes: >>> 3) The Mac solved the user interface problem. It didn't perfect it. >> >> The Xerox Star solved the user interface problem. The Mac took this >> solution and tried to cram it into a 128K box. > > Alan Kay (working at Xerox) solved the user interface problem. His >machine was the Dynabook which was available as early as 1973. The >Xerox Star was introduced about a year after the Mac. OK, time for a history lesson. . The Dynabook *still* isn't available :( but it's getting close. What Alan Kay had when I was hanging around the edges of his group in 1971 or thereabouts was the *Interim* Dynabook: the Alto. It was probably the first workstation. Its programming language was Smalltalk (in an early incarnation). It *did* have a mouse, overlapping windows, scrollbars, popup menus, and icons (used in menus). The screen was 640x800, portrait mode. . The Dynabook was to be a flat laptop with a touch-sensitive screen, equipped with cellular radio networking and a CPU able to do real-time animation of "Japanimation" quality (~10 frames/sec) and high-quality sound. Take a "NeXT" machine and put it in a package the size of half a ream of paper, and you have the idea. . Xerox also had several "paint" programs remarkably similar to MacPaint. . The laser printer was invented at Xerox at about the same time; a CRT-based thing called the Xerox Graphics Printer came out somewhat earlier (`69 or `70, I think). (But the Dynabook's hardcopy mechanism was even simpler: just lay it face down on a copier!) . The Ethernet was invented at Xerox in, I think, 1972. . The mouse (with three buttons) was invented by Doug Engelbart at SRI in the mid-60's; it was used in Doug's implementation of hypertext, NLS (which was also the first "outliner"). (The *word* "hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson at about the same time). Many of the ideas behind NLS came from an article by Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think" published in 1945. . Many of the ideas for the Alto/Dynabook interface came from Ivan Sutherland's "Sketchpad" program, and from Alan Kay's doctoral thesis at Univ. of Utah. Some of the ideas for Smalltalk came from Logo; both were intended for use by kids (as well as adults). Xerox PARC had some wonderfully inventive people; Xerox's marketing basically didn't know what to do with their ideas (after all, they were in the copier business). -- Steve Savitzky | apple.com!arc!steve ADVANsoft Research Corp. | (408)727-3357 4301 Great America Parkway | #include<disclaimer.h> Santa Clara, CA 95054 | May the Source be with you!
WMartin@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (William G. Martin) (06/28/89)
There is an interesting book out on this period in Xerox' history, which I recommend to those of you who are interested in the topic. The title is FUMBLING THE FUTURE. Unfortunately, I can't recall the author's name but the title should let you find it in a library catalog. It discusses the development of the Alto/Star product line and the milieu in which that grew, including Englebart and the NLS & mouse development, etc. I was one of a team of Army civilian and military software people who went out to SRI back then and learned NLS and how to program in the CML/L10 language group to support NLS-based systems development. We had a nice little office-automation system going in the NLS environment for a while, called "ELITE" (Executive-Level Interactive Terminal Environment). We stayed with NLS while it moved from SRI to Tymshare, but tthen, later on, our HQ terminated the project and directed it be redeveloped under UNIX, the rationale being that we were too single-vendor-dependent under NLS, and also the UNIX route was cheaper. Regards, Will Martin -------
astieber@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Anthony J Stieber) (07/07/89)
In article <12505524010.13.WMARTIN@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> WMartin@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (William G. Martin) writes: >There is an interesting book out on this period in Xerox' history, >which I recommend to those of you who are interested in the topic. The title >is FUMBLING THE FUTURE. Unfortunately, I can't recall the author's name [...] >Regards, Will Martin >------- And here is the entry from UWM online card catalog: FULL DISPLAY ITEM 1 (OF 1 ) AUTHOR Smith, Douglas K. TITLE Fumbling the future : how Xerox invented, then ignored, the first personal computer / Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander. --1st ed. -- New York: W. Morrow, c1988. (AKE1515) LOCATION General Stacks CALL NO. HD9802.3 U64 X477 1988 FORMAT 274 p. ; 25 cm. -- Tony Stieber astieber@csd4.milw.wisc.ed att!uwmcsd1!uwmcsd4!astieber