Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Aires's posts Post Back to profile
Aires

Do you, or have you ever, used a graphical user interface? If you use #Windows, #macOS, or any version of #Linux with a window manager or desktop environment, you can thank Dr. Clarence "Skip" Ellis.

Dr. Ellis worked at Xerox PARC, the research organization that developed the modern GUI. Icons, windows, the mouse, Ethernet-based networking, laser printing - all of these (and more) came out of PARC. Dr. Ellis led the team that created Officetalk, the first program to use icons and the Internet. He got his start at 15 years old showing a local tech company how to reuse punch cards, which was a game-changer back in 1958.

Oh, and he was also the first black man to earn a PhD in Computer Science.

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistory #BlackMastodon #ComputerScience @blackmastodon

elective.collegeboard.org/clar
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence
redhat.com/en/command-line-her
4 February at 17:16 | Open on tiggi.es
3 comments
Aires

Aside: if you're interested at all in the history of computer science, watch this video. Doug Engelbart gave this demo in 1968, long before personal computing. It debuted windows, graphics, video conferencing, word processing, real-time collaborative editing, and a buch of other things that still influence modern software design. Much of it influenced the projects at PARC.

youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzM

4 February at 17:20 | Open on tiggi.es
Aires

Aside 2: I recognize I've been featuring black men so far, so I'm going to try to feature more women and queer figures.

4 February at 17:27 | Open on tiggi.es
Kite

@aires its seriously impressive how i can see some connective tissue being presented here to software and computers today. :3

i also didnt quite understand how the whole projection thing worked, despite their attempts to explain it at the start. very cool stuff tho.

4 February at 17:32 | Open on tech.lgbt
Go Up