
Nov 10  CHM: Live Xerox Alto demo with original PARC development team - fernly
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/upcoming/#yesterdays-computer-tomorrow-xerox-alto
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Animats
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.

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exikyut
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.

\---

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](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/](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...

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alankay1
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...

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

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memsom
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSPlr4AZsKQ)

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Stratoscope
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_.

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CaliforniaKarl
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!

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chanelloren
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!

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CaliforniaKarl
That's awesome. Thanks very much!

~~~
chanelloren
You're welcome!

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convolvatron
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?

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jf
General volunteering information for the CHM is here:
[http://www.computerhistory.org/volunteers/](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)

~~~
convolvatron
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

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ellisd
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.

