Xerox Alto/Star archives?

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_look.ca>
Date: Sat Sep 23 00:39:46 2000

 
> Xerox PARC did a very cool thing a couple years ago and held "The Last
> Xerox Star Demo". About 600 people (mostly PARC employees but it also
> generated a lot of outside interest) showed up.
>
> It was about an hour and a half long, showing off the features and
> functionality of the Star environment. I don't remember many
> specifics, but one thing that did catch my attention was its ability
> to display mathematical formulas in their more natural form, i.e. when
> a division operation was typed in it would put the numerator on top
> and the divisor on bottom with a horizontal line in between, and it
> did this automatically. You could also dynamically re-map the
> keyboard to get different symbol sets or even different language
> characters. It would show the new keyboard layout on the display so
> you could use it for reference.
>
> The interface seemed more intuitive in some cases, very logically
> organized overall. There was some rawness to it but overall it struck
> me as being more advanced than what MS and Apple are offering even
> today.
>
> There were some elements that were not as advanced, but there had been
> 15 years of development effort between the Star and Windows, and
> Windows still lagged.
>
> Sellam International Man of Intrigue
> and Danger

 My Micom 2000 from 1977 also had a similiar ability. They called
it "subscript" and "superscript". It was superior in it's abilities to
anything I've seen up to the mid-eighties. While it wouldn't draw
curves it's graphics abilities allowed connecting points
automatically. Using the subscript or superscript
commands you could do a proper fraction or power of # and also
footnote numbers in smaller script. I still can"t do that with this
Pegasus editor I'm using now. It used a very fast(for it's day)
Qume daisy-wheel printer.
 This companies first production model shipped in July 1975 the
month that Gates and Allen inked the first agreement with MITS for
MS-Basic and Dick Hauser had only just opened the first computer
store. By the time Jobs and Woz had figured out the cicuitry for
their board in 76, Micom had shipped 180 units worth $2 million.
 At it's height it had 1100 employees
 The innovative owner-partner Stephen Dorsey had earlier formed
and then sold AES. Philips acquired a chunk of Micom in 78 and
then the rest in 83. Dorsey went on to found Voice and Data
Systems a leader in packet technology. His 2 previous start-ups
had annual sales of $200 million.
 I also wonder whether he played might have played any role in
the Mitel start-up which was the basis for Cowpland's Corel since
he was such a biggy in Canadian electronics technology.
 Apparently NASA among others had a bunch of them. There might
be a few still floating around in Florida.

ciao larry

 

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Received on Sat Sep 23 2000 - 00:39:46 BST