PhiHo wrote:

>     When was Smalltalk really invented?
>
>     Was it in 1972 or 1976 or 1980?
>
>     Did Squeak Central insist on creating things that are worse than
>     Smalltalk-72 and the crowd assumed that it is automatically better
>     than something "old" like Smalltalk-72?
>
>     For that matter, did the commercial Smalltalk vendors insist
>     likewise?

A couple of 'scholarly' notes here.

First, there is a good "later" history of Smalltalk, which decently  
complements Alan's EHoST, by Adele Goldberg. Here's a citation:

   Goldberg, A. (1998). The Community of Smalltalk. In P. H. Salus  
(Ed.), Handbook of
            Programming Languages, Volume 1: Object-Oriented  
Programming Languages
            (pp. 51-94). New York: MacMillan.

To my knowledge, this isn't online anywhere, but Peter Salus'  
Handbook series are big comprehensive tomes that should be available  
at any decent library.

Second, just to respond to the recent historical interest on this  
list, I am currently completing my
PhD dissertation (in education) on the history of the Dynabook/ 
Smalltalk/Squeak project, which *should* (God and everyone else  
willing) be complete - and online - this summer or early fall; it is  
currently caught up in the academic machinery of committees and  
defences, etc. Hopefully that isn't a too much of a tease... stay tuned.


  - John Maxwell
    Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing
    Simon Fraser University
    jmax at sfu.ca