HRM 3450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Dynabook, Apple Lisa, Workstation
5 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HRM 3450 Tutorial 3 Notes – Windowing System
Introduction
• A practical windowing system was built in the 1970s by Alan Kay and others at Xerox
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), as part of a visionary computer concept known as the
Dynabook project.
• The original intention of Dynabook was to develop a book-sized personal computer with
a high-resolution color display and wireless communication that would provide
computer capabilities (particularly secretarial), games, e-mail, and a reference library.
• Although the technology of the time was not sufficient to bring the Dynabook as an
entirety to fruition, the engineers at Xerox in the late 1970s built a personal computer
workstation with a graphical user interface known as Star.
• It is believed that a visit to Xerox PARC by Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, in 1979,
inspired the development of the Apple Lisa and, subsequently, the Apple Macintosh.
• The next important breakthrough in computer use occurred in 1982, with the
introduction of the IBM personal computer.
• The IBM PC was designed as a stand-alone, single-user computer for the mass market.
• The IBM PC was supplied with a reasonably easy-to-use operating system, PC-DOS,
which was developed and also later marketed by Microsoft as MS-DOS.
• PC-DOS was actually derived from an earlier personal computer operating system, CP/M
(Control Program for Microcomputers)
• But is important because of the tremendous success of the IBM PC and its derivatives.
• Gradually, PC-DOS and MS-DOS became the prevalent operating system of the era.
• With later versions, Microsoft made many improvements, including hierarchical
directory file storage, file redirection, better memory management, and an improved
and expanded command set.
• Many of these improvements were derived from UNIX innovations.
• With the addition of Engleart and Kay’s user interfae innovations, MS-DOS has
gradually evolved into Windows XP and Windows Vista, and most recently, Windows 7.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
