EDITOR
Jonathan Grudin
jgrudin@microsoft.com
almost 20 years pass before we started to realize
Bush’s vision? To what extent and how did Bush’s
writings influence Engelbart and Nelson? Did
Nelson and Engelbart interact and influence one
another? What triggered the explosion of research
on hypertext in the late ’60s and ’70s that led to
the first annual conference in 1987 and the first
commercial products? What were the key milestones in the path from there to the Web, regarded
by many as the “killer app” of hypertext?
Interactive Computer Graphics
and Direct Manipulation
Recent publications document the pioneering interactive computer graphics research at MIT Lincoln
Laboratory, including Ivan Sutherland’s influential
Sketchpad system in the early ’60s. Sketchpad
demonstrated the potential for effective computer-aided sketching and design through innovative
concepts including hierarchic internal structure of
computer-represented pictures; recursively defined
operations on these pictures; master copies and
instances; constraints on picture geometry; iconic
representations of constraints; and elegant input
techniques using a light pen. Yet questions remain.
How and to what extent was Sketchpad influenced
by early computer graphics projects such as that
of Stephen Coons and Douglas Ross at the MIT
Electronic Systems Lab? How did these developments inspire and launch the vigorous field of
interactive computer graphics?
Sketchpad and other systems developed at
Lincoln Lab were direct manipulation systems,
satisfying the four criteria posited by Shneiderman
in his important 1983 paper: “ 1. continuous representation of the object of interest; 2. physical
actions … instead of complex [typed] syntax; 3.
rapid, incremental, reversible operations whose
impact … is immediately visible; and 4. layered or
spiral approach to learning.” Yet this paper cites
no work earlier than the late ’70s, so the intellectual history of direct manipulation has yet to be
written. The concepts were also present in early
videogames such as Spacewar—developed at MIT
in 1961-1962—in early computer-aided design
programs, and in the pioneering computer-aided
molecular-chemistry work of Cyrus Levinthal at
MIT. Why did it take two decades to abstract this
interaction style as a new paradigm?
GUIs and WIMP Interfaces
Related concepts are that of the Graphical User
Interface (GUI) and the Windows Icons Menus
Pointers (WIMP) style of interaction. In introducing a CHI 2005 panel on early work at Lincoln, Bill
Buxton stated “it is hard to imagine the innovation
that happened at Xerox PARC in the ’70s having
been possible without the foundation that Lincoln
Labs provided.” I believe this is true, but the case
needs to be made.
Did the work at Lincoln Lab inspire the development of what arguably was the first personal computer, the Alto, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC)? If so, how? Are there direct links
between interactive graphics at Lincoln on calligraphic displays and the Alto bit-mapped display?
The same question can be asked of the development, also at PARC, of Dick Shoup’s Superpaint
color frame buffer. How did these lead to Xerox’s
late and unsuccessful attempt to commercialize
personal computing in the Star system, which
influenced the design of the Apple Lisa, the predecessor of the Macintosh? Where are the earliest manifestations of each key component—bit-