Restoring Yesterday’s “Computer System of Tomorrow”: A Conversation with Curator & Xerox Alto…

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<span>T</span>he innovations of computing past can offer fresh perspective and provide inspiration to a new generation of innovators. The <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/softwarehistory/" target="_blank">Center for Software History</a> at the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/" target="_blank">Computer History Museum (CHM)</a> is restoring two Xerox Alto computers, part of the center’s Alto System Project. The Alto, introduced in 1973 and created by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), combined features that were rare at the time, including page-oriented displays, a mouse, networking, and interchangeable magnetic disk storage packs for individual user data. The Alto was the first <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/computer" target="_blank">computer</a> that allowed people to focus on using the computer as a tool to accomplish a task rather than on <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/learning" target="_blank">learning</a> their computer’s technical details. Today’s computers and connected devices are direct descendants of some of Alto’s early innovations. More on the revolutionary Alto computer can be found in our permanent exhibition, <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14/347" target="_blank"><em>Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing</em></a>.