A bit of Xerox history.

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Sun Jun 20 21:39:09 1999

At 07:11 PM 6/20/99 -0700, Cameron wrote:
>ISTR it was the Star.

There are some common misconceptions here, and not to pick on Cameron, he
simply provided the line necessary to make a small point.

The computers built by PARC were:
        ALTO - this was a prototype microcode loadable machine
                with CDC disk pack attached. Generally credited to
                be the machine that was running the software that
                inspired the Mac and later windows (Charles went to
                work for Microsoft from PARC)
        ALTO II - Was Xeroxes attempt to manufacture the Alto as a
                product. (they weren't very successful)
        DANDELION - Officialy the Xerox 8010 Workstation. Which ran
                a set of applications called "Star" or "The Star
                Document Processing System"
        DORADO - ECL version of the "D-machine" architecture that
                was the machine that ran Smalltalk really quickly.

Both the Alto and the Dandelion also ran XDE (called "tahoe") which was the
"Xerox Development Environment" and it ran on top of an operating system
called "Pilot".

This first-hand from the Network Services Architect for the Office Systems
Business Unit in Palo Alto, who also happens to be my wife of nearly 16 years.

--Chuck
Received on Sun Jun 20 1999 - 21:39:09 BST