Alan Kay in the world of computers

    Alan Curtis Kay is an American mathematician. Creator of the principles on which the work of a personal computer is based. An amazingly interesting person, mentor to the founders of Apple.
    Kei cares about a lot of things that most of us have never thought about. He sees what we do not see. He is aware of the existence of some possibilities long before they become apparent to others.

    Alan Curtis Kay was born on May 17, 1940 in the city of Springfield. In a family of humanities and musicians.
    His mother was a professional singer, so a significant place in his childhood was given to music. After graduation, he became a college student, but for participating in a protest, Jewish students were expelled. For this reason he was forced to find a job as a music teacher in the guitar class.
    Nothing foreshadowed that in the future he would become the forefather of the idea of ​​a personal computer.
    Alan's life changed dramatically after serving in the army.
    During military service, he passed the test for programming ability. His further service was in the US Air Force, working on an IBM 1401 computer.
    After being discharged, Kay entered the University of Colorado with a degree in mathematics and molecular biology, then in 1966 he entered the graduate school of the University of Utah.
    There is his acquaintance with the work of Ivan Sutherland.
    This encourages him to learn the language of Simula. As a result, he formulates the principle of biological analogy.
    He claims that an ideal computer should be similar to a living organism, where each cell is individual, but together they can form a single system capable of regrouping and changing the structure.
    In the fall of 1968, Kay had another significant meeting, which in many respects influenced his future. He met Seymour Piperth and spent some time working with him in artificial intelligence laboratories at the Massachusetts University of Technology and Stanford.

    In parallel, Kay begins to develop software for the Flex computer, developed in the laboratory. Although Flex was not launched into mass production, it was essentially a prototype of a personal computer.
    In 1969, Kay defended his doctoral dissertation, in which he developed the principles of creating a personal computer - powerful, but easy to manage. After defending his dissertation, Kay went to work at the Stanford University Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence, and in 1971 he moved to the Xerox research center in Palo Alto Research Center, where he continued the theoretical development of a personal computer prototype, which he named Dynabook. This computer, not exceeding the size of the notebook, had to have the ability to process texts and graphic information, and also serve as a means of communication with remote databases. In addition, this computer was supposed to be inexpensive and affordable to a wide range of customers.
    In 1972, he became the leader of the Learning Research Group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
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    The super-task set before Kay looked as follows. Then it seemed that the finale of paper technology was close. She was to be replaced by another - but which one? At the level of hardware that was in the early seventies, it was only possible to build hypotheses, although it is clear that the basis should be a computer. Therefore, research groups were created at Xerox PARC, which were given complete freedom to use the computers that existed at that time. Scientists could make astrological forecasts or create word processing systems for printing antiwar leaflets. This is exactly what the group was doing under the leadership of Alan Kay.
    The article was devoted to the group “Fanatic life and symbolic death among computer coolers”.

    One of the basic principles of managing a new computer was not to enter commands from the keyboard, but to select them using the “mouse” from the proposed menu.

    Historically, humanity has been developing in two directions. The first is the invention of means that enhance its capabilities: wheels, telescopes, written languages, and mathematics. The second is the subordination of these processes to the goals and the management of the activities of an individual and collectives (religion, culture, state, various forms of organization for joint work).

    At the end of the fifties, scientists realized that a computer is not only a counting tool, but also a medium that can be used to interact with a person. The bulk of people today imagine a computer in its external interface forms.

    Microprocessors appeared in 1971, and Kay’s project was partially implemented in the Alto computer introduced by Xerox in 1973. For Alto, Kay developed the visually oriented programming language Smalltalk, in which he laid the foundations of the graphic principle of organizing programs and files, allowing you to simultaneously display several programs in the form of "windows". Although Alto was not launched into mass production, it is considered the first personal computer to appear two years earlier than Altair. Subsequently, Apple developed the Lisa computer based on Alto principles.

    Two names are most often associated with the results of Alan Kay’s work at Xerox PARC - Dynabook and SmallTalk.

    Dynabook is the concept of a learning device.
    The Dynabook concept described what is now known as a laptop, or tablet, or computer with a writing surface with an almost perpetual battery life and software that helps give children access to digital knowledge media.

    For this, the Star GUI graphical interface was designed and modeled, which absorbed all the elements we are familiar with today - windows, icons, menus and much more. The Star GUI is the prototype for the Macintosh.

    The Dynabook project was never completed, but had a significant impact on the future. True, there was one attempt to implement “in hardware” - under the name Alto based on the Nova minicomputer, and then Dorado.
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    Smalltalk is an object-oriented programming language.
    From the very beginning it was believed that Smalltalk as a Dynabook programming tool would be very simple, accessible for children. Its first version was modeled by several thousand Basic operators in October 1972, four months later an assembly version appeared (Smalltalk-72). In 1974, when it was installed on Alto, it was possible to begin experimental work with children. Until 1980, work on Smalltalk-72, and then Smalltalk-74, was exclusively local. It was decided to make the version of Smalltalk-80 public, for which it was supposed to release several types of documents, from articles to books (sequentially “Blue”, “Orange” and “Green”). In this work, Dan Ingalls played a significant role.
    In 1982, Kay moved from Xerox to Atari, and in 1984 then became a member of the Apple Science Council.
    In 1996, Kay left Apple for Walt Disney. In parallel, he participated in the experimental educational project The Viviarium. In 2001, Kay left Walt Disney, where he was engaged in the development of attractions for parks.
    Winner of the 2003 Turing Prize for his work on object-oriented programming, Kyoto Prize (2004).

    Alan Kay - Speech at ACM Award Ceremony


    Until mid-2005, he was a senior fellow at HP Labs developing new open source technologies for various devices.

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