Xerox Star

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Xerox Star 8010

The Xerox Star , official name: Xerox 8010 Information System was one of the Xerox Systems Development Division (SDD) in El Segundo , California , developed workstation with a graphical user interface ( English, graphical user interface , short GUI).

Many of the innovations came from the Xerox PARC research center , with some of the institute's staff also working at an SDD branch in Palo Alto . After the Xerox Alto , which was developed in 1973 for research, the user-friendly graphical user interface was first used in a commercial computer in the 1981 released Star . There was already a mouse-operated desktop with menus and windows . In addition to an Ethernet interface, the system, like its predecessor, supports the WYSIWYG display. The Star used a 16-bit character set to support European fonts, Japanese, and later other fonts.

The star is often said to be a role model for the development of the Apple Macintosh . In fact, however, it was the Xerox Alto that inspired Steve Jobs to build the Apple Lisa (1983) when he visited Xerox PARC in 1979 (two years before the star was released) . The Apple Macintosh was based on the Apple Lisa in 1984.

A Lisp machine with the name Xerox Dandelion based on the 8010 was also developed at Xerox PARC ; the name Star related to the operating system with GUI.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Zenon W. Pylyshyn, Liam Bannon: Perspectives on the Computer Revolution . Intellect Books, January 1989, ISBN 978-0-89391-369-4 , pp. 262, 263 etc. Compare Alto and Star with detailed specifications (accessed November 18, 2014).