BBC documentary history of computers part 6

This is part 6. The BBC broadcasted in 1991 the serie 'The dream machine'. This part starts with the history of books, Canon Tiller Master of the Library Hereford Cathedral talks about the first 'chain library' (at least you did not have to pay a fee for books which were returned to late).

Mitchell Kapor founder of Lotus talks about how frustrating it was to program an old computer (with punched cards)

Robert Taylor, Computer Science Lab. Xerox talks about the frustration with these old punched cards, which students of Standford shows by a film of an very frustrated computer programmer commit suicide

Sketchpad was an innovative system developed in 1963 by Ivan Sutherland as part of his PhD thesis (wiki link below), Ted Nelson author 'Computer Lib' comments on the introduction of this Sketchpad

Further we see Douglas Engelbart who invented something which had the farmost impact on the computer as we know it today, in fact i'm using it while editing this text

Xerox's research centre in Palo Alto gathered together the brightest computer sciencetists they could find with the task to make computers easier to use (Larry Tesler of Xerox PARC comments on this as well as Alan Kay, also from Xerox).

Some wifi links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card
http://www.cadazz.com/cad-software-Sketchpad.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Computer
• Science
• Lab.
• Xerox
• PARC
• punched
• Standford
• suicide
• Sketchpad
• Sutherland
• Taylor
• Nelson
• lib
• Palto
• Alto
• Tesler
• Kay

[shebotnov]

holy shit @ sketchpad in 1960 omg

[xXCHICAGO71Xx]

Who's Thomas Edison

[BennyB5555]

I remember using the "Xerox Alto" in 1973 at PARC when I worked there. The mouse was called a GUI - and I do remember how amazing it was being able to email/transmit to each other Alto's connected. When the 80's came around we all chuckled because we had been using this technology for over a decade! I loved how whatever you would have on your screen was exactly how it printed. Those were the days indeed. Xerox at the time had no interest in the business

of Personal Computers.

[jmitterii2]

No, no. NO. They went to work there because of the bean bags.

[snuckles108]

5:06 Blender's grandfather well because I use that to model my 3D objects for a game and the creation of internet I'm able to learn how to make 3D games for free no college intended saves me money going for nursing careers. :)

[nergvol]

@LikeItDeep I am embarrassed to say...he was trying look like me.

[Mrkirill578]

You can see 3DsMAX Beta at 5:05

[middletech]

This seemed like it was disjointed and a mix of two or more documentaries.

[psykick77]

Wow, cool mouse.

[LikeItDeep]

Well the glasses are off and the nose and moustache remain but now I can see that his eyebrows join above his nose. Perhaps he is wearing a pair of joke eyebrows with the nose and moustache attached.