NAE's Draper Prize Goes To PARC's Alto Developers

mccalli writes "The National Academy of Engineering has awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize to various individuals 'for the vision, conception, and development of the principles for, and their effective integration in, the world's first practical networked personal computers.' The prize is shared amongst two ex-Xerox people, with MIT and HP also making a showing."

Comments

Recognition

[SabrStryk]

It's good that contributors to the early days of computing are being recognized; I'm sure everyone here understands what it means to do good work and never get a nod for it. At the same time, it comes too late to have a strong impact on careers. Perhaps this is good; the individuals cited in the article seem to have a made a name for themselves in other work as well, and have not been judged solely on their earlier work.

Another thing I would like to see is a more mainstream news source to pick up this story, even if it's a small sidebar; the general populace recognizes names like Jobs and Gates, but a much smaller percentage (including myself) knows of the other, less business-oriented figures in the industry.

Good to see originators getting credit.

[rebeka thomas]

So often I see credit for "the gui" going to Apple, when it's these guys who should be getting the real credit. More work in GUI design, more original thought and more of the first hard yards in GUI systems were put in by the Alto originators than Apple's work, which was just in mass marketing an already existing product.

Kudos to them I say

Re:Good to see originators getting credit.

[rebeka thomas]

So you want to rewrite history by saying Apple was first?

Nice try. The first Alto was more than 10 years BEFORE the first mac. If there's one thing I fucking hate it's Apple revisionists trying to rewrite history.

Take a google around and read. learn. You might just ignite a spark of intelligence.

Re:Good to see originators getting credit.

[utexaspunk]

at the time of those studies, mice (and GUI interfaces, for that matter) were relatively new to people. i think the results would be quite different now. the complexity of a multi-button mouse may be a little tricky for a complete newbie, but it IS intuitive.

think about it- you can do multiple things with your hands: grasp, twist, point, etc. having multiple mouse buttons is a similar concept. i've got a logitech MX 700 at home and when i come to work where i don't have the forward/back buttons on the thumb, i find myself occasionally feeling for them. anyone who has gotten comfortable with the use of a scroll wheel can tell you that you really notice its absence when using a computer that doesn't have one.

the lack of a right mouse button dumbs down things and makes it less intuitive, and having to push the command key means you need two hands to do half of the functions on the computer. it doesn't make things faster- you have to think "ok, now i need to push the command key with my left hand... where is that thing... ok" whenever you want to do something, instead of just pushing your middle finger.

although it wouldn't fix the issue with laptops, i wish apple would at least make a "pro" mouse that has the extra buttons and a scroll wheel and matches the design of their computers. i might consider buying a mac if they did that...

Re:Good to see originators getting credit.

[Frennzy]

Again, CITE YOUR SOURCES.

I call hogwash. I'll bet dollars to donuts it's simply not true. When I can accomplish the same function, without engaging full motion of my other arm, moving my eyes from the screen to the keyboard, etc., I am much more efficient than with a single click.

I'm not a Mac basher, but saying that one button is more efficient is just blatant zealotry.

Alto PC

[stuffduff]

The Alto PC was such a huge leap forward that almost no one could really grasp the concept. These were the guys who saw the computer for the first time as something beyond punch cards, tape reels and stacks of line printed greenbar. They shaped the visions of people like Jobs & Woz, and helped to spark the personal computer revolution.

Good Job! Well deserved!

Alan Kay and the rest of the PARC crew richly

[crovira]

deserve it.

They brought computing to the masses (or would have if Xerox hadn't shot itself in the foot.)

But Apple followed up with the Lisa, which cost too much, and then the Mac.

Gates tagged along with Windows (which was stolen from IBM's Presentation Manager [which paid for its development.)

The rest is history.

Now if only they had thought or Relationships between Objects... (I have :-)

Re:Alan Kay and the rest of the PARC crew richly

[BitGeek]

Yes, windows was clearly a rip off of the Macintosh, not IBMs work.

Apple, WHO INVENTED THE GUI, never gets the credit they deserve-- for what tehy added to XEROX'x basic research, nor for what Microsoft stole from them.

Re:Alan Kay and the rest of the PARC crew richly

[TheAncientHacker]

Nonsense. The GUI was prior art for years before Wozniak and his marketing friend (Steve something) started Apple. What Microsoft brought to the table was the first "GUI for the Masses" that didn't require proprietary hardware (like the Alto, the Lisa and Macintosh).

Some real info about the Alto.

[Animats]

The Alto was a neat machine. I've programmed one in Mesa, and I visited PARC in 1975, long before Jobs.

The Alto's computer was a rack-mounted Data General minicomputer with some special microcode. Xexox built the mouse, Ethernet adapter, and CRT, but manufacture of the computer was outsourced.

The real history of the GUI is that the first GUI appeared on the SAGE air defense system. The SAGE pointing device was a light gun. After light guns came light pens and the "RAND tablet", the first tablet input device. Doug Engelbart invented the mouse in the late 1960s, and put together an impressive GUI demo, but he had to tie up an entire mainframe to make it work. The Alto was basically an attempt to squeeze down the technology into a useful size.

Alan Kay referred to the Alto as the "Interim Dynabook". What he had in mind was a laptop. The original Dynabook paper has a picture of a woman sitting on grass using a laptop. It's a cardboard mockup. Todays laptops are less bulky and about a thousand times more powerful than what Kay had in mind. Cheaper, too; Kay wanted to reach the price point of a grand piano. He had a clear vision on the hardware front.

The Xerox PARC approach was to create technology that was futuristic but not cost effective, with the idea that progress in electronics would bring the cost down. That was exactly right.

What wasn't right was the emphasis on closed systems. The PARC idea was that it all should just work, and the end user shouldn't have to worry about how it works. Just like Xerox copiers. Out of this mindset came the Xerox Star, Xerox's commercial product. The Star was a networked word processor/office computer networked to file servers and printers. Think of a computer that runs nothing but Microsoft Office and you'll have the right picture. No user-serviceable parts inside.

That wasn't the way things went. The CP/M - Apple DOS - PCDOS end of computing won out over PARC elegance. Mostly for cost reasons.

As indigo montoya might say ...

[ClosedSource]

You keep using this acronym "GUI". I don't think it means, what you think it means.