The Xerox Alto, the computer that introduced us to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and forever aliented Command-Line Interface (CLI) programmers everywhere, has reached the ripe old age of 30. So, Vintage and the Computer History Museum is celebrating this weekend it in grand style by having a panel of past and present Xerox PARC luminaries speak about the development of the Alto. They are also featuring a line-up of classic (and working) Xerox machines. Jef Raskin will speak on the second day of the event, so if you live in the Bay Area, don’t miss it this weekend! OSNews featured a related retro article with many cool pictures a few months ago.Here’s the current schedule:
Saturday, October 11
Time Speaker Topic
——– ——————- ————————————–
10:00 AM Evan Koblentz History of the PDA
11:00 AM Zbigniew Stachniak Microcomputing in Canada 1973-1983
11:30 AM Christine Finn Collecting the Collectors
12:00 PM Len Shustek Keynote Speech
12:30 PM Lynne & Bill Jolitz The Symmetric 375 and Berkeley Unix
1:00 PM Xerox Alto Panel Xerox Alto 30th Birthday Bash
Sunday, October 12
Time Speaker Topic
——– ——————- ————————————–
10:00 AM Joey Tuttle A Personal History of the IBM 5100
11:00 AM Forth Panel Using Forth with Vintage Computers
11:30 AM Todd Fischer IMSAI History & the New IMSAI Series 2
12:00 PM Sellam Ismail VCF Shenanigans
12:30 PM Jef Raskin The Humane Interface
1:00 PM Bruce Damer Joys and Trials of Computer Collecting
1:30 PM Andre’ LaMothe Neo-Retro: The XGameStation
I might be going there tomorrow. If I do, I will be getting some pictures for OSNews.
“We innovate and everybody else takes credit for our shit!”
Poor Xerox. Here’s to 30 more years!
does anyone have pics of this computer or a screenshot or i running. One always hears of it. But I have never seen a it.
If you had followed the second link, you would have seen one…
weren’t these computers the first “kit” computers for home users to put together?
No, the Xerox Alto costed about $50,000, it was a real big machine, buying it “as is”.
You might be thinking of the first Apples ($666.66) which didn’t have a case.
maybe you mean the altair?
thanks Eugenia, i didn’t see it in there before, still no screen shots.
Those Xerox senior execs at the time must be still kicking themselves in the a**(if there still alive) for not seeing what they really had. 30 years ago, they could have begun to rule the world, now they look at Apple and Microsoft and all they can do is just cry(all those options, all that money).
Here is a bad one:
http://www.grospixels.com/site/images/pc/altosshot.jpg
http://www.grospixels.com/site/images/pc/xealto.jpg
They got laser printers out of it, so I bet they’re not kicking too hard.
eh, i get forbiddens with those links
Reload and reload. It works then.
The best book about the entire PARC experience is the following http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071358927/002-443429…
I really enjoyed it, and you will see that it is the classic west coast vs east coast dynamics that cost xerox the race
When I graduated from College( RIT ) in 1983, I was finishing up a Co-op block by working at Xerox in Rochester NY. They hired me on after graduation. I worked at the Jefferson Rd. buiding, which had some R&D, but the main “plant” was the “campus” in Webster NY (many maufacturing building, R&D center, Computer center with Xerox Sigma 9’s, etc). I was doing development for low end copier products. We used custom, home-brewed tools from PARC that ran on our Alto’s. Yes, we all had Ethernet, Laser Printers (REAL printers, 50 ppm, with their own dedicated servers for storage, or if you had a really big job, you’d send it across the building to the 120 ppm 9600 laster printer). We all ran Interpress (the father of Postscript). We had the WYSIWYG stuff. 3 button mouse, and Oh, don’t forget the extra 10 MEG BYTE disk packs we had to lug around! About a year later, we started getting the “STAR” workstations, very powerful (even for a 2901 16 bit slice based Processor), all with these HUGE 22″ CRT’s. Upgraded software, e-mail, etc, and it was rather state-of-the-art then, and even by today’s standards, it was pretty sophisticated. I left after ~ 2 yrs for greener pastures (young, ambitious, stupid!). And then I purchased my First MAC, a 512K “Fat Mac” with a 9″ CRT. OHHH, how I wished for the STAR workstation!!! Truly a remarkable computer for it’s time.
Also recommended is “Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age”
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0887309895
I get permission denied too on those links, but at DigiBarn they have more then enough pictures to make up for it
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/index.html
sanders, thanks for the link
one of Eugenia’s links worked in IE, guess firebird doesn’t like em for some reason.
I think here are pictures of the first and second one on the first page of GUI Gallery’s Timeline:
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline2.html
The timeline starts at 1973, which must come after Apple invented the GUI, mouse and color monitor.
I found some pictures from the CRAY-3 in the linked article and became quite interested in it (especially since there seems to be only one of its kind). I searched google and cray.com but couldn’t find much further information about it. does anyone have some information on that machine? like speed comparison with current computers, history, why there was only one, how it works etc?
i’m kinda curious about that machine.
thx.ez
And from there the Amiga, Atari and MacOS Finder were born 😉 IMHO, we have moved away from the original idea of GUIs to something too complex. Lets hope that in the future companies will realise that more doesn’t always mean best.
Some of the items on display at the museum are quite impressive. They look like devices featured in Andromeda Ascendant or Stargate SG-1 episodes. Thank God, nowadays, we don’t have to haul memory the size of a jet engine.
As a high school student I almost bought a core stack maybe a 4K bytes frame from the warehouses that used to get rid of that junk. Good job I didn’t though, getting those things to work would have required resources & knowledge far beyond my soldering iron & enthusiasm.
Soon I would find out all about the 6100 Intersil chip the equiv of a PDP8 on 1 CMOS chip that would have worked even better than the DEC TTL box. And the 8080, 6800 etc. What memories….
In a way I am glad I never had to build the early gen technology, so much effort for relatively little cpu power, transister by transister or gate by gate.
Much later in 82 I almost took a job at Parc in fab process group, maybe I should have, different life story, umm..
If I remember right, those early Parc machines were built in ECL technology rather than the TTL more commonly used, faster & more heat & much better signal integrity but the TTL guys thought ECL was really hard to do when it was probably much easier. High speed CMOS made both go away.
RE:<The Xerox Alto, the computer that introduced us to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and forever aliented Command-Line Interface (CLI)>
not for everyone, i still compile sourcode and do large file transfers in CLI as it does not demand resources like a GUI does, of course when i do use GUI is it a light WM such as WindowMaker or Xfce4…
Booboo: that sure is a pretty desktop.
Yogi: sure is, i got it spiffy lookin’.
Booboo: yeah, too bad it is hogging up most your resources and there is barely much left for applications.
Yogi: i don’t run applications anymore, i just sit here and drool on the screen while dreaming of picknick baskets…
Booboo: don’t look now but here comes the ranger.
Ranger: Yogi! where are those files i need edited, printed & distributed!
When looking at the screenshots from: http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline2.html things really didn’t change that much after 1983 apple released the Lisa.
Most noticable improvements since that year:
1988 NeXT complete 3D look, how did they get this all out of a 25MHz machine!!
1995 BeOS, compared to the win95 above, I still can’t believe people went with windows
2000 MacOSX the UI just looks impressive. But compared to the NeXT 12 years back, i really start wondering what people have done inbetween.
you think xerox missed opportunity? wait to see what they will miss AGAIN with electronic ink
seem the company is recovering a bit lately, but just because the demand for current product is going up again, not because the sell new product.
etc… etc… not to forget their modular universal robot, another thing that they will never sell, probably lego will do it before them.
<When looking at the screenshots from:
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline2.html things really didn’t change that much after 1983 apple released the Lisa.>
Things really didn’t change much WITH the release of Lisa… the only real Lisa innovation seems to be the trash can (it appears that Visi On had menus at the same time as Lisa).
<Most noticable improvements since that year [1983]:>
How about: 1985 Commodore and Microsoft release color GUIs (two years before Mac, but it appears from the screenshot that the GEM GUI might have had color in 1984), also in 1985, it seems Windows has the first dock/wharf/pier/taskbar.
<1988 NeXT complete 3D look, how did they get this all out of a 25MHz machine!!>
Yes. The total 3D look is significant, but it’s basically just a different set of bitmaps/pixmaps, so it shouldn’t require much more computer power.
How about: 1994 QNX has the first pager (it looks like OS/2 Warp also had one in 1996).
<1995 BeOS, compared to the win95 above, I still can’t believe people went with windows>
BeOS has “tab-like” title bars, but I don’t see any major functional or aesthetic difference between the two GUIs, other than the Windows taskbar starts default.
<2000 MacOSX the UI just looks impressive. But compared to the NeXT 12 years back, i really start wondering what people have done inbetween.>
The magnifying function of the “dock” is really the only new GUI feature in OSX.
I’m not sure about the accuracy of these screenshots in regards to the given dates. Also, no dates are given for the X-windows timeline, so the gallery probably lacks some important screenshots. But I think I have managed to point out several advancements that were missed in your post.
My Atari St with GEM certainly did have colour before the Mac.
And BeOS in 1995 certainly looked a LOT better than Windows, and it was also a LOT faster.
“My Atari St with GEM certainly did have colour before the Mac.”
So did the Amigas, but the Mac II had better colour.
>>>”My Atari St with GEM certainly did have colour before the Mac.”<<<
>>So did the Amigas, but the Mac II had better colour.<<
Keep in mind that it seems that GEM had color in 1984 and Mac did not have color until 1987. That 2-3 year delay is an eternity, given the incredible rate of development happening in those days. Achieving “better colour” over such an extended period fails to qualify as a significant milestone.