1972: Xerox Alto (1, 2)

- designed as the workstation for Xerox's office of the future
- 1972 "Why Alto" memo by Butler Lampson (3)
- some architecture borrowed from Lincoln Labs TX-2
- sufficient power to drive a sophisticated screen and I/O
- windows
- bit-mapped display (manipulate screen elements by setting memory bits)

- Alan Kay (Dynabook) @ PARC
- screen could display 8.5 x 11 "paper" image
- screen displays text and images

These notes are taken primarily from (1) and (2). Need specific citations.

- mouse (from Englebart's group at SRI)

- ethernet available
- ethernet access to laser printers
- cost about $18,000 to build
- was never sold to the public

- installed a network of 100 in White House and Congress

- many view Alto as the first PC, but it's too expensive

Notes

1. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine (Basic Books, 1996).

2. Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

3. Butler Lampson, "Why Alto" (Xerox PARC Memorandum to Xerox CSL, 1972 Dec 19). Also available online at http://www.digibarn.com/friends/butler-lampson/index.html (DigiBarn Computer Museum, accessed 2004 Nov 14).

Bibliography

"The Xerox Alto Computer," http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/alto.html (www.fortunecity.com, accessed 2004 Nov 13).

Al Kossow, "The Xerox Alto Archive," http://www.spies.com/~aek/alto/index.html (Al Kossow, accessed 2004 Nov 13).