Douglas C. Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse, dies

The New York Times has reported that a true pioneer of computing has died, Doug Englebart, who is credited with inventing the computer mouse and the graphical user interface that we still all use to this day has died aged 88. In the 1960s he had a vision of computers that could be networked together and used intuitively by pointing and clicking at icons on a screen. On December 9 1968, Doug Engelbart and his group of 17 researchers from the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The presentation has become a legend and is now called "The Mother of All Demos" - the public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. These breakthrough ideas were subsequently taken up by Xerox at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and then commercialised by Apple with the Mac.

Did Roger Fidler invent the #iPad in 1994?

Roger Fidler with the iPad and his tablet 

An interesting video has surfaced on YouTube that shows Roger Fidler, University of Missouri program director for digital publishing, talking about a device for digital newspapers that looks very similar to the iPad. Moreover, you'll see in the video that many of the features of Fidler's tablet are very similar to the iPad and features of the Safari browser and magazine apps.
   Samsung, who is in patent infringement litigation with Apple, is claiming that since Filbert's tablet was in the public domain in 1994 Apple can't have patented the idea. However, before we all rush off and call Steve Jobs a conman and a plagiarist, we should appreciate that Fidler's tablet was only an idea, he never built them.

Alan Kay with the Dynabook

   If we want to find the real inventor of the iPad then Alan Kay of Xerox PARC can probably lay claim to having first invented the idea with his Dynabook in 1972, a small portable tablet with an intuitive GUI. However, like Fidler's tablet, the Dynabook remained just an idea until Apple built it and called it the iPad.
   
(skip in about 4 mins to see the tablet)

The end of the desktop metaphor

Over the weekend I came across a couple of interesting articles that lead to an intriguing possible future. The first was that Apple sold more iOS devices (156 million) in 2011 than it sold Macs (122 million) in 28 years of their existence. Note that 2011 was the most successful year in the Macs entire history. So the basic point here is that very many more people are using iOS than are using OS X. Here's graph from Mashable that visualises this.

Apple Mac GUI

   So, the next article which resonates was in Gizmodo, which makes the point that the user experience of using iOS apps is very different to using programs on OS X. Basically, iOS doesn't use the desktop metaphor, which Xerox PARC first developed and Apple made popular with the Macintosh in 1984. You may not have thought about the desktop metaphor but it still reigns supreme on Macs, Windows and Linux. Think of a desk on which you have pieces of paper and reports you're working on along with some tools like a calculator, diary and calendar. As you move from one task to another the focus of attention switches from say a report to the calculator to the calendar. All are in sight but you only work in one at any given moment - this is the desktop metaphor. With iOS we give up managing where the files we are working on physically reside and allow the app to manage that itself, just as most of us gave up thinking about where our music is filed and allow iTunes to handle that.
   For the personal user I think this is an advantage, it will certainly help my mother. However, I am skeptical that it will work for the professional user handling, for example, dozens of similar documents but for different accounts or the programmer working on different projects. Being able to partition life into "Project B" and "Client X" is a tidy and natural process, which the desktop metaphor with its filing system accommodates well, hence its longevity.

Jack Goldman, Founder of Xerox PARC, Dies

Jack Goldman

Jack Goldman, in 1969, proposed that Xerox should have a research centre, just like the other big tech companies IBM and AT&T. He made the decision to locate it on the west coast, near Stanford University, and far away for Xerox's head office on the east coast. His decision was inspired and Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (or PARC) became a magnet for the techno-hippies of the Bay Area. PARC it was estimated soon employed 50% of the computer scientists in the US.
    Researchers at PARC went on to invent the graphical user interface (GUI), the mouse, networked computers (the Ethernet), postscript, the laser printer and object orientated programming. If you are using a computer today it can can trace much of its origin back to Xerox PARC. You can read the full story in Chapter 6 Deadheads and Propeller Heads of my book. The complete story of PARC is fascinating and is told in detail in Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michale Hiltzik. Why Xerox didn't become the most powerful IT company in the world, bigger than Microsoft or IBM is a moot point. Some say incompetent, visionless, executives. But, hindsight gives us 20/20 vision and rather simply a photocopier company just couldn't grasp a future dominated by inexpensive software and computers.
PARC still exists and its website is here.

How's the book coming along Ian?

Is a common question I get asked, and I often avoid a precise answer: "oh, slowly", might be a common reply.

Currently I'm working on content for what may be Chapter 6, which centres on the early developments in Silicon Valley, the Stanford Research Institute and Doug Englebart, Xerox PARC and leading on to the Homebrew Computer Club, Wozniac, Jobs and Apple.

Now there is a lot of stuff that could go into this chapter. I have one book on Xerox PARC that is 450 pages long! So obviously deciding what goes in and what doesn't is a major headache. What I realised the other day is that I don't need to make these decisions all at once. If I now lay down the main structure and flow of the chapter I can at a later date (probably next year) reread all my sources and at that time decide what details and anecdotes to add to my chapter. That should even by quite fun.

On a separate issue I was reading a book called the Physics of Star Trek last night and I wondered if perhaps my book should have lots of small bite sized chapters or sections rather than a small number of long traditional 30ish page chapters. It might make the book easier to digest. If you have opinions one way or the other let me know.

The Hardest Chapter

Perhaps the hardest chapter is always the one that you're currently working on. However, the chapter on the innovations coming out of Northern California in the 60s and 70s is challenging me. There's just so much material and so many people involved. Compare this to the chapter on the Analytical Engine where there was really only Charles Babbage and little bit of Ada Lovelace.

However, I think a way through is emerging. I'm currently planing to concentrate on three people:

• Doug Engelbart - the inventor of the mouse and heavily involved in the development of networking and the GUI
• Alan Kay - the inventor of object-oriented programming and the Dynabook (the precursor of the iPad)
• Steve Wozniak - co-founder of Apple and designer of the Apple I & II

I'll also concentrate on three institutions: SRI, Xerox PARC, and the Homebrew Computer Club.

I know that this will cause some to howl "what about so and so" and "what about such and such" but it has to be done.

Time to do some work

It's Tuesday and the University is closed today (mid-semester break) so I can get some work done on the book.

With the iPad being so much in the news this weekend and some techies commenting that it's the  Dyanbook made real I'm going to get some material together on Alan Kay, it's inventor.

 Alan Kay is one of the legendary ex-employees of Xerox PARC credited with helping invent the GUI, object-oriented programming and the tablet computer or eBook (i.e., the Dynabook).

The best book I've come across on the subject of Xerox PARC is:
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik

Running over 400 pages it's very comprehensive, but probably only for the devoted. My task is to distil this book down into few pages that summarise the highlights of Xerox's remarkable influence on modern computing. Alan Kay's contribution I guess will have to occupy no more than a few paragraphs! This isn't going to be easy.

His home page is at http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html though it doesn't look like it's maintained by him. I do like this quote though:

"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!"

This would make a good quote for the start of the chapter.

There's also a page at Viewpoints Research Institute where Alan was a founder http://vpri.org/html/people/founders.htm

Here I discover that in addition to being a brilliant computer scientist it seems that Alan was also a professional jazz guitarist. Gosh don't you love these multi-talented people? My wife says that a lot of very bright people are also talented musicians, seems like she's right in this case.