Ron Baecker’s initial chapter in the 1987 volume of readings that he wrote and edited with Bill Buxton was a very influential reflection on HCI history. It was widely read, reprinted, and served as a model or starting point for subsequent histories. In this review of major themes, Ron poses questions and encourages us to seek out answers while we can. In the 1970s and 1980s I worked for two leading technology companies that eventually went out of business. They left surprisingly few traces. It would be ironic to lose knowledge of the origins of an industry that may preserve almost everything that transpires in the future. Ron’s questions demand continued attention; finding the answers may require years of effort. —Jonathan Grudin

Themes in the
Early History of HCI—
Some Unanswered Questions
Ronald M. Baecker

University of Toronto | [e-mail]

[ 1] Other worthy concepts and paradigms include (in no particular order) user-interface toolkits, evaluation methods, mental models, formal methods for describing human-computer interactions, interaction techniques, input devices, mobile devices, virtual reality, computer games, information visualization, speech input and output, and multimodal interfaces.

graphic and industrial design (design), usability testing (testing), and understanding workplace context (context).

These six phenomena have been chosen from an even longer list of topics that could be considered highly significant in the development of HCI [ 1]. To me, they seem the most significant. Do we understand how these ideas and developments arose? What important unanswered questions come to mind?

We are grateful to the editors for this series, as it encourages us to reflect on the past and to understand that technological miracles do not spring fully formed from the minds of researchers. More typically, they arise from the thoughts and inspirations and long nights of effort of many who have worked in HCI in the past. As this series shows, the interplay among researchers can often be represented by timelines portraying strands of development or thought.

Because our work (variously called “ human-computer interaction,” “interaction design,” and “knowledge media design”) has transformed the way human beings create knowledge, learn, think, communicate, and collaborate, we must record and understand our history. By gathering original sources, we can produce accurate, rich, and nuanced accounts of the intellectual history of our field. This is urgent because our opportunity to talk to and record the experiences of many who made seminal contributions is limited. Several have already passed away—Vannevar Bush on June 30, 1974, J.C.R. Licklider on June 26, 1990, Allen Newell on July 19, 1992, Herb Simon on February 9, 2001, Kristen Nygaard on August 10, 2002, Jeff Raskin on February 26, 2005, and, most recently, Brian Shackel on May 9, 2007.

Some valuable contributions have already been made. Several short histories provide useful overviews of HCI. There are books about Licklider and Doug Englebart, and excellent accounts of the early history of personal computing (see page 26).

From these and other sources we can sketch a timeline of significant early threads of our discipline (Figure 1), namely, hypertext (HT), interactive graphics and the concept of direct manipulation (DM), GUI and WIMP interfaces (GUIs), the role of

Hypertext

The origin of hypertext is generally credited to Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article introducing the “Memex,” a mechanism he envisioned for storing documents and linkages among them, and for enabling paths of exploration through the document space. Technological visionaries Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson creatively elaborated Bush’s vision in the 1960s. They envisioned using computers to build and manipulate richly structured complexes of interconnected, interlinked bodies of text. They realized, as Bush had not, that most information would be stored digitally rather than on microfilm. Yet their approaches differed substantively. Engelbart focused on hierarchic structures for ordinary documents to enable computers to support their preparation; Nelson was more interested in lateral links and interconnections to create novel text “spaces.” Engelbart looked to support creativity and problem-solving in teams; Nelson was excited by individual exploration and combining contributions from people with no formal ties.

Yet interesting questions still come to mind. Why, besides the need to wait for Moore’s Law to make hardware sufficiently inexpensive, did