Nov 10 CHM: Live Xerox Alto demo with original PARC development team | Hacker News Reader

Nov 10 CHM: Live Xerox Alto demo with original PARC development team

computerhistory.org

54 pointsfernly18 comments

I saw this demo in 1975. But then it was Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, neither of whom is presenting this time.

I've used Bravo on an Alto. It was a good editor, the predecessor of Microsoft Word. On the Alto, it was used for programming as well as document preparation. The file format was plain text, then a control-Z, then the formatting information. The Mesa compiler stopped reading at control-Z, so you could put boldface and such in your source code.

Those were cute machines. I used them in the 1980s, when they were obsolete, and Stanford still had a few running.

What might make this a thousand times better is a way to submit questions online for the Q&A session.

Obviously some hard decisions would need to be made about which questions to actually ask, but a voting system, while crude, might allow the question database to self-prioritize before the event.

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I have to admit that the question I immediately wanted to ask this group is very offtopic, but I wanted to add the above suggestion anyway because I know others likely would come up with good questions. FWIW, here's what I thought of:

The source code to SketchPad turned up online several months ago: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903

I'd love to see a functional TX-2 emulator that can run SketchPad, and I'd be very willing to commit time to making it a reality. But the source scan is of extremely poor quality, AFAIK comprehensive in-depth info about the TX-2 isn't really out there, and no hardware survives.

A better scan would be an excellent start. I'm in Australia, or I'd have volunteered the time to rescan everything a very long time ago.

From there, much more info about the TX-2 is needed.

I'm reminded of http://martin.poupe.org/casio/ (select "assembler information", the site uses frames) who reverse-engineered and wrote an assembler for his calculator without knowing anything about the architecture - but he had hardware he could experiment with.

Again, I realize this is incredibly offtopic...

Hi! I am an Associate Producer at the museum and you will have the opportunity to submit questions in the comment section on the Facebook live stream. I will be collection questions from our virtual audience. Go to the museums Facebook page @ 7pm on November 10th. I hope you get a chance to watch live!

Arg! This is so awesome, but I don't have a Facebook account :'(

Ahh, I see. Unfortunately, at this time we only collect questions from our in-person audience that attends as well as the comment section from the Facebook live stream player. Apologies about this!

First of all, a clarification: the Facebook Live stream will be available after the event, right? I presume so, just making absolutely sure!

As an aside, it would be cool to have a recorded copy of source-quality video too. Maybe that's being a bit obsessive going that far, but I'm really looking forward to watching this event :) (and the last time I tried Facebook Live myself - doing the filming for someone else - the connection dropped 15 seconds in...)

About commenting:

Hmm. There are few other general-purpose platforms that would be appropriate for this type of task (I can definitely concur that reddit for example wouldn't be concretely ideal, for a variety of reasons).

While a noteworthy amount of effort, perhaps the CHM site itself could be adapted to handle this. Obviously it would be most ideal to do this in a generalized way that could be reused for other things as well - maybe articles (such as the event article) could have a comment section (I'm envisaging a simple "Comments »" at the bottom - underneath the Location section in this case), with a realtime backend. That would make the system effectively implement the semantics of comments and realtime chat in one go. A bit of work to implement, but not at all impossible.

I'd envisage this feature being used in the context of "it'll probably be most convenient to comment on the Facebook stream directly, but if you don't have Facebook you can also use the CHM site over here." Time would tell what sort of split there would be.

I'm unfortunately not too great at keeping a good pace when I start projects (I'm too easily snowed under with real-life distractions and tasks, heh!), and that makes me slightly hesitant about offering to help implementing a system like this. On the other hand it could go really well. How does site maintenance work? Is there a volunteer team for that?

I noticed that Alan Kay popped in here and answered my question. That was really awesome. :)

Brian Silverman, who has done some miraculous "bringing back software to life" (and some HW as well), has always wanted to do this.

The problem here is partly that no one is quite sure "which" TX-2 has to be emulated, and, worse, where to find the specs. The machine was a research computer and constantly tinkered with, including changing instructions and formats. Also, Sketchpad was written in a macro-assembler (Coral) which was idiosyncratic to say the least.

But I would advise contacting Brian to chat about this...

Thanks very much for this first-hand information! :)

The Alto is getting a lot more press recently! CuriousMarc is currently fixing another one for the Digibarn[0]. I'd never seen one till the first of his videos, only knew they existed because of the Apple history and through a semester of Smalltalk at University. Very interesting.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSPlr4AZsKQ

For anyone who has as much trouble reading this on a mobile device as I did (what happened to the contrast?):

CHM Live

Yesterday’s Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto

Live Alto Demonstrations by: Doug Brotz, Dan Ingalls, Tom Malloy, John Shoch, Charles Simonyi, Bob Sproull.

How did personal computing start? Many credit Apple and IBM for this radical shift, but in 1973, years before the Apple II and IBM PC, Xerox built the Alto, a computer its makers thought could become the “computer of tomorrow.” The Alto embodied for the first time many of the defining features of personal computing that seem natural now, over forty years later: individual use; interactive, graphical displays; networking; graphical interfaces with overlapping windows and icons; WYSIWYG word processing; browsers; email; and the list goes on . The birthplace of this pioneering machine was Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which assembled a remarkable collection of computer scientists and engineers who made real their idea of “distributed personal computing.”

Original members of the PARC team will present live demonstrations of, and discuss, some of the Alto’s remarkable achievements: Tom Malloy and Charles Simonyi will present Bravo, the WYSIWYG word processor; Bob Sproull will show the graphics programs Markup and Draw; Doug Brotz will display the email client Laurel; Dan Ingalls will reveal the breakthrough programming environment and language Smalltalk; and John Shoch will survey the Alto’s other accomplishments. Our program will close with an audience Q&A session with the PARC presenters. The event will be moderated by David C. Brock, Director of the Museum’s Center for Software History. This will be a unique opportunity to learn about yesterday’s computer of tomorrow that profoundly shaped our world.

This event is co-produced by the Museum’s Center for Software History @CHM(, which collects preserves, interprets, and presents to the world the history of software and its ongoing impact on global society. The Center for Software History’s Al Kossow restored two Xerox Alto computers starting in March of 2017 as part of the center’s Alto System Project. An extensive Alto software archive has been preserved by Al Kossow and extensively curated by valued Museum volunteer Paul McJones, and it publicly available on the Museum’s website. You can learn more about the revolutionary Alto in our permanent exhibition, Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.

Argh!

I know CHM have put alot of stuff up on YouTube, and I hope they do for this as well. There are already two other events in this time-slot that I want to go to!

Hi! I am the Associate Producer for live events at the Computer History Museum. Yes, this live show will be published on the Computer History Museums YouTube channel a couple days after the event. If you cannot attend in person or watch the show on the Facebook live stream, you can watch it on demand immediately after the show on the museums Facebook page in the video section. Let me know if you have any additional questions!

That's awesome. Thanks very much!

You're welcome!

i know everyone says this, but I'm so glad they found a way to make this happen.

now that thats out of the way could we do the same with a Symbolics? who do I contact to volunteer time?

General volunteering information for the CHM is here: http://www.computerhistory.org/volunteers/

As far as the Symbolics event goes, could you email me what you're thinking about so I can pass the idea along? (As a MacIvory owner myself, I can guess what you'd like to see but I'd want to be sure)

I just think it would be fantastic to have a presentation from people who had their hands in it about what made that such a different and productive platform. especially given the level of general interest in that topic the last couple years.

thanks very much for the link, will follow up there

After sitting down on a real Alto machine last week at the Living Computers: Museum + Labs, I'm beyond excited for this event! Thank you so much to the speakers, sponsors and organizers for arranging this.

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