I understood that on-screen icons were invented by David Canfield Smith in his dissertation work, Pygmalion, an icon-based programming language written in Smalltalk-72. David went on to be lead of the Xerox Star UI Design team, didn't he?
Mark
Recently someone asked in one of our internal newsgroups at SDRC
"Does anyone know how icons came to be known as icons? Why they are called that, who started it, etc?".
I was thinking that ICONs may have been invented at PARC. Probably someone on this mailing list knows the answer and I'd like to hear the real story.
Thanks in advance,
- Steve
-------------------------- Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
Okay, Okay ...
The first "icons" on a screen that I am aware of were the picture symbols that stood for constraints in Sketchpad (ca. 1962). The idea of having pictures on screen that stood for ideas was widespread in the ARPA community in the 60s. The particular use of the word "icon" for these picture symbols came ultimately from Jerome Bruner's "Iconic Mentality" as charaterized in books such as "Towards a theory of instruction", ca. 1965. I read these books and proposed in 1971 that part of our project at PARC should be "iconic programming", coining a name for something for which there were already examples (cf Ambit-G at Lincoln Labs, GRAIL at RAND, etc.). Dave Smith was my graduate student and was specifically encouraged to do a thesis that involved "iconic programming". The big contribution of the thesis was a good start at "Programming by Example", which was a newer idea than programming in pictures. Later, he did "SmallStar" which was the prototype for the Xerox Star done in Smalltalk. At the very same time of Dave's thesis, Nicholas Negroponte was creating "Dataland", which in its later incarnations (SDMS) was also one of the sources for the ideas in the Mac Finder.
Cheers,
Alan
------
At 8:28 AM -0800 10/27/99, Mark Guzdial wrote:
I understood that on-screen icons were invented by David Canfield Smith in his dissertation work, Pygmalion, an icon-based programming language written in Smalltalk-72. David went on to be lead of the Xerox Star UI Design team, didn't he?
Mark
Recently someone asked in one of our internal newsgroups at SDRC
"Does anyone know how icons came to be known as icons? Why they are called that, who started it, etc?".
I was thinking that ICONs may have been invented at PARC. Probably someone on this mailing list knows the answer and I'd like to hear the real story.
Thanks in advance,
- Steve
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
One of the disadvantages of working in the same city as a major conference is that "the boss" can still pull you back into the office.
Since I can only attend OOPSLA for three days or less, could you tell me what days are the best for Squeak-related content?
I know, this is like "if you were shipwrecked on a desert island from the SS Barnes and Noble and could only grab three books from the wreckage to spend the rest of your life with, what would they be?"
Ed
One of the disadvantages of working in the same city as a major conference is that "the boss" can still pull you back into the office.
Since I can only attend OOPSLA for three days or less, could you tell me what days are the best for Squeak-related content?
I know, this is like "if you were shipwrecked on a desert island from the SS Barnes and Noble and could only grab three books from the wreckage to spend the rest of your life with, what would they be?"
Ed
I'd be sure to see Dan's Keynote on Thursday. There will also be a Squeak BoF, probably Wednesday evening. If you only want to pay for one day of the conference I think you can still sneak into the BoF.
-- John
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Alan Kay -
Edward P Luwish -
John.Maloney＠disney.com -
Mark Guzdial