Personal distributed computing: the Alto and Ethernet hardware

Abstract

Between 1972 and 1980, the first distributed personal computing system was built at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The system was composed of a number of Alto workstations connected by an Ethernet local network. It also included servers that provided centralized facilities. This paper describes the development of the hardware that was the basis of the system.

Human–computer interaction – Whence and whither?

“…With multi-access time-sharing, the economics were improved and above all users began to feel the potential of direct control. At Xerox PARC in the mid-1970s, the Alto, a prototype ''workstation", was produced; eventually many were linked via a network to give the first example of today's powerful Local Area Network (LAN) of personal computers (Thacker, 1986). At the same time, in rapid succession from 1975 to 1984, the personal computer was developed, from the Altair kit to the Apple II and Commodore PET, the IBM PC, the Apple LISA and MACINTOSH (see Goldberg, 1988, for the history).…”

Alan Kay: Transforming the Computer into a Communication Medium

“…… When the machine is required to play the game on the human's terms, presenting a pageful of attractively (or even legibly) formatted text, graphs, or pictures in a fraction of a second in which the human can pick out a significant pattern, it is the other way around: people are fast, and machines are slow. 19 In contrast to earlier computer systems, the Alto attempted to emulate many of the characteristics of paper. The Alto keyboard resembled a typewriter with eight uncommitted keys that software could use as function or option keys.…”

Retrospective: a processor for a high-performance personal computer

“…Three excellent papers [4,5,6] by Alan Kay, Adele Goldberg, Chuck Thacker, and Butler Lampson (first author of this anthology paper) describe the ideas and implementations that created personal distributed computing, the Alto, and its environment.…”