The Paperback Computer

Tom Kelliher, CS14A

Mar. 19, 1997

Reading for Friday: Unit 4B of Computers in Your Future.

Important ideas (IMHO (In My Humble Opinion --- an acronym often seen on the net in USENET and mailing lists)):

1. Chained libraries of the 16th century: similar to computer labs of today.

2. 30 years ago, it was ludicrous to imagine that computers would ever be commonplace.

3. Using a computer required one to have a deep understanding of the ``peculiar'' logic behind computers.

4. Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad: first interactive computing, first GUI. 1965: first Virtual reality.

5. Inventor of the mouse: Doug Englebart.

6. Research at Xerox PARC: make computers easy to use, bring them to everyone. Led to study of how children learn and eventually to the GUI interface: a desktop-like interface on which objects were manipulated.

7. Xerox PARC's computer: the Alto. Created in early 1970's, it cost $45,000.

8. Inventor of the microprocesspr: Tedd Hoff of Intel.

9. First PC: the Altair.

10. Apple Computer: Jobs and Wozniak. Fastest growing company in history --- proving that people wanted their own computers.

11. 1981: the IBM PC.

12. Jobs saw the Xerox PARC GUI research as the key to bringing computers to everyone. Led to Macintosh.

13. In their 1984 ad, Apple attacks IBM. Should they have attacked Microsoft?