re The evolution of historyAt least computer history

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dave Burstein <daveb () dslprime com>
> Date: December 12, 2018 at 9:35:44 AM GMT+9
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Dave Farber via ip <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] The evolution of historyAt least computer history
>
> Dave
>
> I wanted to refute the comment about Steve Levy. While he may have made a mistake on this, he is one of the finest 
> tech reporters of my generation. I've learned a great deal from his books and articles.
>
> He's a good and generous guy. He also one of the best stylists of anyone writing about computers and the Internet.
>
> Dave Burstein
> Editor, http://Fastnet.news http://wirelessone.news gfastnews.com
> Reply "sub" for a free subscription to Fast Net News and Wireless One. (2 or 3/month)
>
>
>
> > On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 7:30 PM Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > > From: Lester D Earnest <learnest () stanford edu>
> > > Date: December 12, 2018 at 9:10:20 AM GMT+9
> > > To: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> > > Cc: E-mail Pamphleteer Dave Farber's Interesting People list <ip () listbox com>, "Robert.McFadden () nytimes com" 
> > > <Robert.McFadden () nytimes com>, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com>, Brian Harvey <bh () eecs berkeley edu>, DV 
> > > Henkel-Wallace <gumby () henkel-wallace org>
> > > Subject: Re: Obituary: Evelyn Berezin, 93, Dies; Built the First True Word Processor (in 1969)
> > >
> > > The stories cited, especially the one about my old friend Doug Engelbart, are total bullshit. The Engelbart myth 
> > > and his resulting receipt of the ACM Turing award came out of his 1968 talk in San Francisco, where a seriously  
> > > ignorant journalist in the audience named Steven Levy jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Doug had invented all 
> > > the stuff he was showing even though most of it went back as much as 20 years. Another journalist, John Markoff, 
> > > then repeated that baloney in the New York Times, which by the rules of journalism made it solid history.
> > >      I know all that because I helped create some of the earlier technology, working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory 
> > > beginning in 1956, then in its Mitre Corporation spinoff beginning in 1958. MIT's Whirlwind computer had been 
> > > developed before I got there but I got to play with it and also with the TX-0 and TX-2 computers, all of which 
> > > which had good text editors from their beginnings in the1950s. In summary, all of the published histories about 
> > > text editing are fantasies, like most computer history shown in public media, web sites, and the Computer History 
> > > Museum. The latter is evidently not interested in telling the truth even though I have been trying to bribe them 
> > > with big donations since I became a founding member, following my donations to its predecessor, the Digital 
> > > Computer Museum in Boston.
> > >      One thing that Doug Engelbart did invent was the mouse, with some help from his colleague, Bill English, but 
> > > it was not a big step forward. Many of us had been moving display cursors around for years using Light Guns, a 
> > > pistol-sized optical sensor with a trigger that could be aimed at optical elements on the screen. A smaller and 
> > > lighter version was then developed called the light pen, which I used a lot in my graduate research, developing the 
> > > first cursive handwriting recognizer including the first spelling checker, which won me a free trip to Europe in 
> > > 1962 to present it at the IFIP Congress in Munich.
> > >      The mouse created no new capability but it did have two advantages over the light pen:
> > > It was cheaper, and
> > > It could be moved on a flat horizontal surface instead of having to reach to the screen.
> > > However, with widespread use of pocket computers coming into play, the mouse is now slowly dying, just like Doug 
> > > did.
> > >
> > > Lester Earnest  Call 650-941-3984 (land line) any day from 9am till 11pm Pacific Time
> > > Senior Research Computer Scientist Emeritus, Stanford University
> > >
> > > https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/
>
> This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online.



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