A BRIEF HISTORY OF HCI

13.1 Early Interfaces

Memex (1945)
. Vannevar Bush, 1945 [Bush, 1945b].
. Memex = memory extender.
. Hypothetical design (never built) based on microfilm technology and mechanical levers
integrated into a large desk.
. Vision of document repository with links between documents.
. Trails = chained sequence of links.
. Personal annotations.

Memex Chronology
. Bush started to formulate Memex ideas in 1932 [Nyce and Kahn, 1991, page 42].
. Draft sent to FORTUNE magazine on 07 Dec 1939 [Nyce and Kahn, 1991, page 52], but
publication delayed by USA entering World War 2.
. Bush was presidential science advisor during World War 2.
. Memex article finally published in July 1945 in the Atlantic Monthly [Bush, 1945b].
. A condensed version, with new illustrations by Alfred D. Crimi, was printed on 10 Sep 1945 in
LIFE Magazine [Bush, 1945a].
. Later also reprinted in Nyce and Kahn [1991] and Bush [1996].
. Second, revised article published in 1967 [Bush, 1967], also reprinted in Nyce and Kahn
[1991].

SketchPad (1963)
. Ivan Sutherland, PhD Thesis, MIT, 1963.
. Drawing editor with built-in constraint solver.
. First graphical user interface: using a CRT and a lightpen (and various switches and knobs).
. First use of windows (virtual sheets of paper).
. First object-oriented program.
. Original PhD (scanned by MIT) [Sutherland, 1963a], reconstructed electronic edition produced
by University of Cambridge [Sutherland, 1963b].
. Some video of SketchPad can be seen on Alan Kays video [Kay, 1987, at 00:04:06] and in the
1964 Science Reporter episode [Fitch, 1964].

13.1. EARLY INTERFACES



Figure 13.1: The memex device. [Screen shot from the Memex animation [Adelman and Kahn,
1995], used with kind permission of Paul Kahn.]


Figure 13.2: Part of a trail (A5) about the English long bow. Here a link between pages 3GK27
and 5AKD78R. [Screen shot from the Memex animation [Adelman and Kahn, 1995], used with
kind permission of Paul Kahn.]


Figure 13.3: Ivan Sutherlands SketchPad system. [Image taken from the sun.com web site (it is
no longer there) and used under the terms of the Sun Microsystems Copyright Notice (see page
xiii). ]
Augment/NLS (1968)
. Doug Engelbart, Augmentation Research Center (ARC) of Stanford Research Institute (SRI),
1968.
. First use of the mouse.
. First raster-scan (pixel-based) monitor.
. Mouse and five-chord keyboard for most interaction, keyboard only for entering longer pieces
of text.
. First practical implementation of hypertext links.
. Drawing editor and image links.
. Interactive collaboration: multiple people could point and edit and see each others pointers.
. Famous live demo Mother of all Demos [Wikipedia, 2009] at AFIPS Fall Joint Computer
Conference (FJCC), San Francisco, 09 Dec 1968.

Engelbart and NLS Resources
. Augment concept paper [Engelbart, 1962].
. Comparative study of different input devices [English, Engelbart and Berman, 1967].
. The mouse patent [Engelbart, 1970], filed in 1967, expired in 1987.
. The Bootstrap Institute [Engelbart, 2008].



13.2. WIMP INTERFACES

Figure 13.4: The Augment/NLS Production Mouse used by Doug Engelbart in the famous 1968
live demo. [ Image used with kind permission of Stanford University, Special Collections...
Video interviews and background material at Invisible Revolution [Hegland and Klijnsma,
2008].
. Video of The Mother of all Demos can also be seen on Alan Kays video [Kay, 1987, at
00:10:55].

13.2 WIMP Interfaces

WIMP stands for window, icon, menu, pointing device.

Xerox Alto (1973)
. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) opened 01 Jul 1970.
. PARCs Computer Science Lab had 50 or so of the best computer science researchers in the
world (almost all with PhDs).
. Bean-bag culture.
. Xerox licensed the mouse from SRI in 1971.
. Xerox Alto was first built in 1973.
. The first personal computer, designed to be used by only one person (a very radical idea at
the time).
. Several thousand Altos were built, but it was never released for sale commercially.
. The components alone cost over $10,000 per machine.
188 CHAPTER 13. A BRIEF HISTORY OF HCI
Alto GUI
. Raster graphics display with pixels: black and white 808 606 pixels resolution.
. Windows
. A mouse and a cursor
. Pop-up menus
. Word processor (Bravo)
Bravo and BravoX
Bravo (and later BravoX) was a word processor developed for the Alto by Charles Simonyi and
Butler Lampson:
. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)
. Split screen
. Bold and italic
. Font families
. Variable-width characters (proportional fonts)
Charles Simonyi later joined Microsoft and led development of Microsoft Word.
Networked Desktop Environment
Also at PARC at the same time:
. Laser printer
. Ethernet
In other words, PARC had developed the first networked desktop office environment.
Xerox Star (1981)
. Designed as an office automation system
. Computer as desktop of professionals in business organizations
. Goal: computer invisible to the user.
. Easy-to-learn GUI
Apple Lisa (1983)
Apple Macintosh (1984)
Microsoft Windows (1987)