The "A True Pioneer Of Many Aspects Of Personal Computing" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Preparing to type another story for my blog known as "Extraordinary Stories Form An Ordinary Guy."  After deciding about the topic for the story, I begin to search for material I can use for the story.  Different stories require different material as you might have guessed.  For my recent story about peanut butter and marshmallow crackers I had to gather the box of crackers from above the pantry as well as grab the jars of peanut butter and marshmallow.  I also pulled up the online edition of the latest Saturday Evening Post magazine which I also subscribe to in the print edition.  Just something I enjoy about holding a printed newspaper or magazine or brochure rather then viewing it on a screen.  In the magazine was a story about Ritz crackers.  I then opened Blogger on my computer and pulled up my blog.  After gaining entry into the site I open a new story post.  I always begin each story with the same line, as you probably know by now.  Then I begin my story for the day.  At times I may begin with "Preface" which tells you about the background of what will become the main story or I may begin with a sentence I have copied from something printed already.  To do that I open the original piece of writing and make sure it is legally possible to copy, then if it is legal, I will put my cursor at the beginning of what I want to copy and drag the cursor to the end of what I want to copy which will highlight the words in blue.  I then hit the lower case "c" to copy.  Then I place the cursor in my story where I want to place what I just highlighted, and hit the lower case "v".  Some computers may be different I realize, but this is how I copy and paste something.  I never realized that what I was doing had to have been invented or developed years ago by someone who knew programing.

Mr. Lawrence Tesler. one of the true pioneers of many
important aspects of personal computing.

 In the case of cutting and pasting, the person who was responsible for that feature you and I use was Lawrence Tesler.  Hey, with a first name like that, he just had to be inventive.  Seems that Mr. Tesler recently died at his home in Portola Valley, California at the age of 74.  As a young researcher for Xerox at the Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s he helped develop today's style of computer interaction based on a graphical desktop metaphor and a mouse.  In 1973, he and his buddy Tim Mott developed a program known as "Gypsy" which did away with the restrictive modes that made text editing complicated.  I can still remember one day, years and years ago, when all teachers where I taught high school graphics and photography had an In-Service day where we learned to write programing for computers.  People take years to learn to do that and we were expected to learn how to write programing in 6 hours?  Texler worked at a number of Silicon Valley companies including Apple under Steve Jobs.  But, it was at Xerox that he developed today's style of computer interaction based on graphical desktop metaphor and a mouse.  It was while at Xerox that he also developed, along with Tim Mott, the program known as "Gypsy" which did away with the restrictive modes that had made text editing complicated.  It was the Gypsy program that offered the "cut and paste" for moving blocks of text and the ability to select text by dragging the cursor through it while holding down the mouse button.  It was in 1978 that he designed, with Adele Goldberg and Douglas Fairbairn, a portable machine called NoteTaker which was one of the forerunners to our laptops of today.  Mr. Texler gave Mr. Jobs a demonstration on the Xerox Alto computer which lead to the Apple's Lisa personal computer and then its Macintosh.  He went to work at Apple in 1980.  While at Apple he founded their Advanced Technology Group which developed the hand-held computer.  Tesler left Apple in 1997 to work for both Amazon and Yahoo.  I should mention that while Mr. Tesler was a student at the Bronx School of Science, he developed, at the age of 15, a new method of generating prime numbers.  He told his teacher that his method was a formula, but the teacher disagreed and said it was an algorithm, and could be implemented on a computer.  Wasn't long before he was working with programming language.   His story is way above my level of understanding, so I believe I should stop at this point in trying to explain all he has accomplished.  I thank him for at least developing the method I use daily of cut-and-paste.  couldn't live without it.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.