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Xerox Alto Source Code Released To Public
zonker writes: In 1970, the Xerox Corporation established the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) with the goal to develop an "architecture of information" and lay the groundwork for future electronic office products. The pioneering Alto project that began in 1972 invented or refined many of the fundamental hardware and software ideas upon which our modern devices are based, including raster displays, mouse pointing devices, direct-manipulation user interfaces, windows and menus, the first WYSIWYG word processor, and Ethernet.
The first Altos were built as research prototypes. By the fall of 1976 PARC's research was far enough along that a Xerox product group started to design products based on their prototypes. Ultimately, ~1,500 were built and deployed throughout the Xerox Corporation, as well as at universities and other sites. The Alto was never sold as a product but its legacy served as inspiration for the future.
With the permission of the Palo Alto Research Center, the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use only, snapshots of Alto source code, executables, documentation, font files, and other files from 1975 to 1987. The files are organized by the original server on which they resided at PARC that correspond to files that were restored from archive tapes. An interesting look at retro-future.
The first Altos were built as research prototypes. By the fall of 1976 PARC's research was far enough along that a Xerox product group started to design products based on their prototypes. Ultimately, ~1,500 were built and deployed throughout the Xerox Corporation, as well as at universities and other sites. The Alto was never sold as a product but its legacy served as inspiration for the future.
With the permission of the Palo Alto Research Center, the Computer History Museum is pleased to make available, for non-commercial use only, snapshots of Alto source code, executables, documentation, font files, and other files from 1975 to 1987. The files are organized by the original server on which they resided at PARC that correspond to files that were restored from archive tapes. An interesting look at retro-future.
osage writes: Several colleagues and I have worked on an open source project for over 20 years under a corporate aegis. Though nothing like Apache, we have a sizable user community and the software is considered one of the de facto standards for what it does. The problem is that we have never been able to attract new, younger programmers, and members of the original set have been forced to find jobs elsewhere or are close to retirement. The corporation has no interest in supporting the software. Thus, in the near future, the project will lose its web site host and be devoid of its developers and maintainers. Our initial attempts to find someone to adopt the software haven't worked. We are looking for suggestions as to what course to pursue. We can't be the only open source project in this position.
http://www.computerhistory.org... (from tfa)
they knew the best display aspect ratio for getting work done
Is there an emulator this would run under?
tora
You weren't noticing. Apple stole it from Xerox!
The space age rocked.
The Apollo program and the military (Minuteman missile) pushed integrated circuit technology. Remember that 1969 was the culmination of Apollo, not the start. PARC was founded in 1970, the Alto started in 1972 and they had a working system by '76.
There were a lot of things pushing computing in the 60's and 70's. The space program was a big part but business was using computers as well. The national laboratories were pushing for faster and faster computers. The Cray I supercomputer was available in '76.
If possible, it would be interesting to cross compile the code to a modern processor and see how fast it would fly, given the limited capabilities of hardware at the time. Remember, we're talking about 1MHz 16-20 bit processors at the time the project started, if that.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The difference between NASA and PARC is that NASA just followed the narrow goal of space exportation and PARC (being XEROX) tried to get the computer into the office. The use of computers for space exploration is does not bare many fruits for normal people. On the other hand almost everybody needs text processing and table calculations, including people that do not work in offices.
True that, but in the 60s and 70s you would rather find a general purpose computer at an university or research facility than a business.
Ten or twenty years ago, when enthusiasts still had this hardware, this would have been very interesting. I remember David Case having a big pile of the stuff he had nothing to do with because software was too hard to come by. Today, virtually all of that stuff has been landfilled or recycled.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh wow... it's like you spend your whole life understanding your childhood.
When I saw that image of the Sol-20, it immediately took me back to being 6yrs old. I'd go with my father to work in a manufacturing plant. He ran "The lab" and up until the late 70s, they'd program their machines with an infrared laser onto a chip... and it was a nightmare because it took hours and if anyone turned on a light it would ruin the etch. Then these computers started showing up with floppy drives and the first one I remember seeing looked exactly like that Sol-20. I'm assuming that's what it was. I got to type on it for fun a couple of times. Later they swapped to Commador's, apple IIs, IBM clones, etc... whatever was cheap.
This was probably the first computer I ever touched. Wow!
Am I the only one here that is impressed that they were able to restore the archives from tape from 40 years ago just fine? :)
mouse pointing devices
You went with that because you didn't know whether to put mouses or mice, right?
It is, of course, mieces.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
In 1977 or thereabouts, I was a co-op student at Xerox' Webster, NY Research Center. At lunchtime, I had access to an Alto, and spent far too much time playing MazeWar, a networked multi-player real-time 3D-perspective game wherein the players navigated a maze (displayed as wireframe 3D with an overhead map at the side), finding other players (who appeared as giant floating eyeballs) and zapping them. Once zapped, you respawned elsewhere in the maze and attempted to sneak up on your opponent and return the favor.
The graphics were extremely simple; there was no detail in the walls, just lines showing the edges, and player positions were limited to the center of each grid square; player movement was in discrete jumps. All of this was done to reduce the computational load for the graphics, of course. As a result, the system was very responsive, and the experience was quite immersive.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
What on earth is "An interesting look at retro-future"?
Some settling may occur during posting.
That is completely wrong. The IBM 360 was introduced in 1964. The POP even calls the instructions the commercial instruction set. Before that there was the IBM 702 (1952), the IBM 650 (1953), and the IBM 1401 (1959). All were general purpose machines used by businesses.
No, not space.
Codebreaking and the Bomb were the reason for computers.
The Minuteman missile was the reason for integrated circuits.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
There really should be an august monument to noble accomplishments Xerox achieved.
Stylish, classic, with a simple inscription:
"On this spot, Steve Jobs stole all his good ideas."
You're off by at least a decade, maybe two.
IBM mainframes were never really used that much in scientific applications. They cost too much. That's why minicomputers were so popular. Big business used IBM mainframes starting from the early 50's. COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) was introduced in '59.
Computing follows the money. The money was initially in the military market, then the business market.
"Codebreaking and the Bomb were the reason for computers."
Not even. It was curiosity and mathematics... Then came the codebreaking.
"I wish these tables had been calculated by steam!" or some such... Babbage? 19th century? People needed tables for navigation, calculation, artillery tables, etc?
" there were ever tube computers in space"
Not that I'm aware, in the West, no, but tubes certainly were used in space for the radios. Pencil triode, traveling wave tube and probably some planar triodes here and there.
I have heard of miniature "integrated" tubes from the East and something called a thermionic integrated micro module from the West.
Mostly random stuff.
I wonder how many software patents these revelations will bust?
They've been copying the design for years, now you can copy the source code too!
Jokes aside, these were groundbreaking machines that determined the next 30 years or so of UI design. It had to be polished a bit to work on personal computers of the day (by Mssrs Gates and Jobs) and unfortunately somewhat cut down. The Alto screens were meant to replace paper, and only now has the price come down enough that we are getting screens with the resolution to rival paper.
A lot of companies continued to use older specialized business machines even years after the IBM S/360 was introduced. It's not like when IBM S/360 was introduced, everyone suddenly threw away all the recently-bought expensive equipment.
Ezekiel 23:20
NASA didn't invent the IC, but the initial orders of Fairchild's first digital RTL ICs sometime around 1962 were a massive push for the manufacturing and QA processes at Fairchild. The Fairchild people reportedly said that the strict requirements for the delivered units and the detailed feedback from the MIT people who used them to build the AGCs gave them vital experience for repeatable manufacturing of reliable logic circuits. (The AGC unit was not repairable during flight so those few thousand ICs had to work flawlessly.)
Ezekiel 23:20
In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use.
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... )
Who said otherwise? I was responding to the incredibly inaccurate statement that general purpose computers were not used by businesses until the late 70s and 80s. Regardless of whether or not older equipment was still in use, general purpose computers WERE used by businesses long before that. The 1401 was a general purpose computer, and they had orders for more than 5000 of them the first month, in 1959. The 360 was a general purpose computer and they had orders for 2000 of those in the first couple of months, in 1964.
In 1969 (a full decade before this guy claims businesses used general purpose computers) the DOJ filed an anti-trust suit against IBM alleging that IBM was 'monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer market, specifically computers designed primarily for business'. How to you monopolize a market that does not exist?
I'm sorry, but the 1401 was only a "general purpose" computer in the sense that the Turing machine is a general purpose computer. The 1400 line was clearly business-oriented (decimal processing, no FP, RPG and COBOL as main tools provided etc.). Even the 700 line had binary models (704, 709) for science and technology use and incompatible decimal models (702, 705) for business use. As far as I know, S/360 was the IBM's first architecture actually suitable for both. Or did I miss some obscure model that was universal but didn't sell well?
Ezekiel 23:20
What odd definition of 'general purpose computer' are you using? A 'general purpose computer' is a computer that can be programmed. 'General purpose' has NOTHING to do with binary or decimal modes, or scientific vs commercial applications. Earlier models of 'computers' were NOT general purpose, they had specific built-in functions, such as adding machines or tragectory calculators, and that is all they did. The 1401 is certainly a general purpose computer. The fact that you list RPG and COBOL proves that it was, in fact, a general purpose computer.
Have you actually ever bothered to find out how your "general purpose machines" worked? As in what their CPUs did, what their peripherals allowed... I didn't say you couldn't perform scientific calculations on the 1401, but it would be like commuting in a lorry, or hauling bricks in a sedan.
Ezekiel 23:20
What does being able to efficiently perform scientific calculations have to do with something being defined as a general purpose computer? NOTHING. General purpose says NOTHING about the suitability of a processor for a given task.
The processor in your cell phone is a general purpose computer. Is it particularly good at performing high-precision scientific calculations? No. Is it particularly good at performing decimal operations? No. Does that mean it is not a general purpose computer? NO!
Many businesses had 1401s, and 360s, and CDCs, and Univacs, etc. What were they all doing? WHATEVER THE CUSTOMER WANTED. Why were they not all doing exactly the same thing, exactly the same way? Because they were GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTERS.
(Emphasis mine.)
Ezekiel 23:20
meaning that they would be competitive and useful to the commercial and scientific markets simultaneously. IBM was thinking in the monetary sense, which makes sense as a business.
A small embedded CPU in a radiation-hardened box is a 'general purpose computer' by the theoretical definition but nobody would buy one to play games and do the wide variety of tasks a PC does today.
Apple invented the desktop. Xerox, Microsoft and Linux are just faggots who've stolen the idea.
Tthe first caveman who propped up a flat rock invented the desktop. Xerox just virtualized it first.