munck@MBUNIX.MITRE.ORG (Bob Munck) (06/28/89)
In V89 #132, arc!steve@apple.com (Steve Savitzky) writes: > ... 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 ... The mouse (with three buttons) was > invented by Doug Engelbart ... Mostly a good history lesson, but I have a few quibbles: my impression was that the Alto's chief language was Mesa (essentially what Ada would have been if it had been designed by a committee of operating system hackers instead of a committee of language hackers); the Alto screen was 606x808; I don't remember "cellular radio" being mentioned in the original Dynabook descriptions. I'd certainly agree that the Alto was the first (mass-produced) workstation. Note that Englebart's 3-button mouse was meant to work with a 5-key chord keyboard under the opposite hand. I wish there were a PC version of it available (or of the larger chord keyboard designed by J. W. Backus at IBM Cambridge). -- Bob Munck
steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) (07/07/89)
In article <27987.615051406@mbunix> munck@mitre.org (Bob Munck) writes: >Mostly a good history lesson, but I have a few quibbles: my impression >was that the Alto's chief language was Mesa The Alto was microcoded; the original microcode emulated a DG Nova. Much of the original OS was written in BCPL; Smalltalk was written in assembler. Later on, microcode instruction sets were designed for Smalltalk, Interlisp, and Mesa. Smalltalk was the "official" language for the "interim Dynabook" project. > the Alto screen was >606x808; Well, I knew it was somewhere around there... > I don't remember "cellular radio" being mentioned in the >original Dynabook descriptions. It wasn't called "cellular", of course, but one of the scenarios involved sitting out in the woods and accessing a database server somewhere else. -- Steve Savitzky | steve@arc.uucp | 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!