An Unofficial History of Advances in Computer Interfaces
Saved (not authored) by Professor A. E. Siegman, Stanford University
The following is an unofficial survey of the claimed historical origins
for various user interface concepts for mainframe and personal computers,
notably the Macintosh computer. Essentially all of this material
is copied or adapted from bboard messages posted by Oliver Steele (steele@weiss.cs.unc.edu)
in March 1988.
Please note: I have no special knowledge on these issues myself. I simply
collected the following information from various 1988 newsgroup discussions
and put it on this web page in order to preserve it. SInce this site
may not last forever, I would be delighted if any computer museum or computer
history group would take over this material and make it available on a
permanent basis on their site.
In the following SRI refers to the Stanford Research Institute, as it
was known at that time. SRI was initially established and operated by Stanford
University to do proprietary and commercially oriented research that might
not have been appropriate in the University's own research labs. During
the campus disruptions of the Vietnam-Cambodia era (1969-70) SRI bought
itself free from Stanford and was renamed SRI International. It is famous
in interface history for the pioneering early work inventing the mouse
and other concepts by Douglas Engelbart in the mid 1970s.
Xeroc PARC refers the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the "dream lab"
in the foothills behind Stanford. It's contribution to computer interface
ideas is described in the book Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented,
Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas Smith and Robert
Alexander. The tour of this lab that Xerox voluntarily offered to Steve
Jobs in 1979 allegedly let the cat out of the bag on many of the interface
ideas that were later used or modified into the Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh
in 1983 and 1984.
Keyboard-based menus
Earlier than 1978, probably quite ancient
Keyboard-based hierarchical menus
UCSD's Pascal system (1978) or earlier
Bitmapped displays
CSL@Xerox PARC, for the Alto(?). PERQ was first commercial product
(or Terak Corporation, c. 1978)
BitBLT raster operations
Dan Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox PARC
Light pen as screen pointer
1960 or earlier
Joysticks
Spacewar games, 1962 or earlier
Trackballs
Some time in 1960s
Pointing device with on-screen pointer
Doug Englebart@SRI (mid 70s).
Mouse
Doug Englebart@SRI (trackball upside down?)
Cursor changes to show system mode
William Newman@Xerox PARC
Cursor changes to show context
David Tilbrook (Newswhole) (1975)
Menus
LRG@Xerox PARC (?)
Popup Menus
Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox PARC
Pulldown menus
Lisa@Apple
Menu bar
Lisa@Apple
Hierarchical menus
Paeth(SSL)@Xerox PARC (Smalltalk)
Disabling of menu items
Lisa@Apple or Ed Anson (1980 or earlier) or Xerox PARC (1982 or earlier)
Command keys for menu items
Lisa@Apple or Ed Anson (1980) or earlier
Check marks on menu items
Lisa@Apple
Overlapped windows
Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox PARC
Tiled windows
CSL@Xerox PARC
Event queues
Simula@NCC, then Lisa@Apple or Ed Anson(GPGS) - > CORE, GKS (1975)
Icons
David Smith(SDD)@Xerox (Star->Mac->Lisa)
Scroll bars
LRG@Xerox PARC
Push Buttons
LRG@Xerox PARC
Radio Buttons
Kaehler(LRG)@Xerox PARC
Check Boxes
LRG@Xerox PARC (?)
Dimming of inactive buttons
David Tilbrook (Newswhole) (1975)
Dialog Boxes
Star@Xerox PARC (property sheets)
Concept of resources
Horn(Mac)@Apple
Multiple fonts & styles in text
CSL@Xerox PARC (Bravo) or Wang word processors (1978 or earlier)
Modeless Interaction
Tesler(SSL)@Xerox PARC
Move/Copy/Delete
Xerox PARC
Cut/Copy/Paste with a mouse
Tesler(SSL)@Xerox PARC (Gypsy, Smalltalk)
Selection point between (instead of on) characters
Tesler(SSL)@Xerox PARC (Gypsy & Smalltalk). TECO had this earlier
than PARC, it is claimed; also Stanford's TVEDIT running on DEC timesharing
systems, Brian Tolliver, 1963
Bruce Horn also noted that, "I think it is unrealistic to attribute
many of these concepts to a single person. Many folks in LRG (Learning
Research Group) & SSL (Systems Science Laboratory), CSL (Computer Science
Laboratory), and SDD (Systems Development Division) at Xerox PARC, and
the Lisa and Mac groups at Apple were involved in creating these ideas."
Ed Anson pointed out that menus have been around longer than pointing
devices, i.e., the first menus were keyboard-based menus. In the list above
"Menu" without modifier means a mouse-driven one. Josh Littlefield, Peter
Schachte, and Jack Campin pointed out that some systems allow the user
to copy/move text in ways other than cut/copy/paste.
Also David Tilbrook described a number of unusual cursor shapes used
in some systems to indicate what the system was doing, or waiting for:
Symbol & Meaning
Buddha = System not ready for input
Oy_Vey! = Invalid selection
Tracker = Used when dragging borders on page
Eh_Wot? = Puck not on tablet or button depressed redundantly
No_Room = Trying to place object without enough space
KeyBoard = Awaiting user input at keyboard
OK? = Action needs to be confirmed
Standard = Anything else