On 10/1/10 13:23 : , Charles Geilfuss wrote:
> I cannot verify the Accuracy but...
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface
>
> Scroll down to Xerox PARC. Don't know if it was "stolen" but Xerox seems to
> have developed the first GUI.
>
Most of what we take for granted in modern computing was developed at PARC.
The GUI, wysiwg word processing, ethernet, PostScript, laser printing,
windows.....
All of it. And Xerox was a company run by copier guys who didn't have a clue
what to do with the stuff their wonderkids invented, so they all left. Robert
Metcalfe took his ethernet and founded 3Com. George Mynock took his PostScript
and founded Adobe. One of the main guys for the wysiwyg word processor on the
Alto system, Charles Simonyi, was hired by Microsoft to develop Word
(ironically, the first couple of versions of Word were dos, text-based only).
The windowing GUI was originally licensed to Apple for the Lisa. That was an
expensive flop, but it foreshadowed what was to come. A number of things that
happened on the Lisa showed up in the Mac. Gates has claimed that they were
developing Windows before Apple did, but that's pretty much accepted as hot
air. My personal feeling is that since Microsoft was one of the first app
developers for the Mac, they suddenly saw the future and that they weren't on
that train yet.
About the only thing Xerox got out of the glory days of PARC was the
laser-printing tech, because they could see how that would work into a copier.
Back in the late '70's, I was a nerdy high school kid interested in electronics
and computers and stuff. One of the guys I learned a lot from had been an EE
in his day, and his son was also an EE working for Xerox. He showed me some
color laser prints that his son had sent him -- I thought they were cool, but
didn't really grasp the significance of what I'd seen until years later.
--
Paul Braun
Valparaiso, IN
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"Enjoy every sandwich." - Warren Zevon
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--
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