> Dick,
>
> Doug Engelbart was the inventor of the mouse. Got the chance to meet
> him around twelve years ago. One of his employees actually coined the
> name mouse.
>
> http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/53.html
>
> Rick Mason
>
Yes, that sounds right! Englebart -- Bing, -- and I'd thought I'd
lost it.
I passed PARC every day on the way to work at IBM. At that time we
were on 1520 Page Mill, across from HP about 1/2 mile from PARC.
Later, after I left IBM, I went on a tour & saw the Alto with its mouse
and full-page 8 1/2 x 11 screen -- it was really something -- there
were several machines connected together on what was the forerunner of
ethernet.
Much of what we take for granted, today (in computers), came out of
that lab -- and Xerox never made a penny from it,
But, many people at PARC were fascinated by the apple ][ (as was I). I
remember selling an apple ][ to a scientist at PARC who could buy up to
$500 without approval -- so we sold him the apple ][ case for $499, the
motherboard for $499, the keyboard for $399 and the 32K RAM for $299
(or some such) -- we threw in the game paddles.
One of the real attractions of the apple ][ was that it displayed in
color (everything else was B&W).
Woz, also threw in Hi-Res color (Black white, green and purple),
Truly an amazing machine with built-in (ROM) BASIC, Mini-Assembler, and
disassembler At the time, Bill gates was selling his version of
Dartmouth BASIC on paper tape.
The apple's BASIC was ready to go when you powered on the machine.
Gates, BASIC was ready to go (maybe) after a 5 minute load (if/when it
loaded).
Mmmm..... in a way, the roles were set back then.
Dick
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