Know a Little More

A computer designed to be used with a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and printer could sound like any computer you've used, all made possible by a graphical user interface used on the Xerox Alto. Tom explores its history.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full episode transcript here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The way you interact with computers was probably shaped by a small team working at Xerox in the 1970s. Tom explains the history of Smalltalk.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From room-sized machines to barely an inconvenience on your desk, laser printers are in nearly every office. But where did they start? Tom explores the origins of the laser printer.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Computers talk to each other via networking, most commonly over a wired ethernet connection. Tom explains how that started and why it was such a breakthrough.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full transcript here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1969, the chief scientist at Xerox, Jack Goldman, decided to found a west-coast research center in Palo Alto, right down the road from Engelbart's SRI. Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center or PARC was far enough from headquarters in Rochester, New York, that scientists could feel a little freer to experiment.Featuring Tom Merritt.Full show transcription here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.