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HCI history
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Text Editing: In 1962 at the Stanford Research Lab, Engelbart proposed, and later implemented, a word processor with automatic word wrap, search and replace, user-definable macros, scrolling text, and commands to move, copy, and delete characters, words, or blocks of text.
The Sketchpad thesis has been reprinted as Sutherland, I.E. (1963), "Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System," MIT Ph.D. Dissertation (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.html).
An archive devoted to the history of using computer graphics to visualize biological macromolecules, starting with the work of Cyrus Levinthal and colleagues at MIT in 1964-67, is http://www.umass.edu/molvis/francoeur/.
English, W.K., Engelbart, D.C., and Berman, M.L., "Display Selection Techniques for Text Manipulation." IEEE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, 1967.
Fred Brooks' and Henry Fuch's groups at UNC did a lot of early research, including the study of force feedback (1971, funding from US Atomic Energy Commission and NSF). Much of the early research on head-mounted displays and on the DataGlove was supported by NASA.
326]. The first computer painting program was probably Dick Shoup's "Superpaint" at PARC (1974-75).
1974: Hosiery Corporation of America is founded.
The first popular commercial game was Pong (about 1976).
Also Xerox PARC Technical Report CSL-77-3, Palo Alto, CA, March 8, 1977.
Kay, A., "Personal Dynamic Media." IEEE Computer, 1977.
Stallman, R.M., Emacs: The Extensible, Customizable, Self-Documenting Display Editor . MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab Report, Number, Aug, 1979, 1979.
Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto has been studying gesture-based interactions since 1980.
In 1980, they reached an agreement that paid Claire Nelson $1.8 million for her share of the company.
Trillium was developed at Xerox PARC in 1981.
In 1981, as the health of Jules Nelson began to falter, Murphy officially took over as chief executive officer and chairman.
Meyrowitz, N. and Van Dam, A., "Interactive Editing Systems: Part 1 and 2." ACM Computing Surveys, 1982.
Smith, D.C., et al. "The Star User Interface: an Overview," in Proceedings of the 1982 National Computer Conference.
While the estate of Jules Nelson was being challenged and the young heir was working out a deal with the company's chief executive, HCA also dealt with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) litigation that had been initiated in 1982.
Direct manipulation was defined in Shneiderman, B. (1983), "Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages," IEEE Computer, August.
The extensive usability testing in Star development is described in Bewley, W., Roberts, T., Schroit, D., and Verplank, W. (1983), "Human Factors Testing in the Design of Xerox's 8010 'Star' Office Workstation," Proc.
1983: Jules Nelson dies, leaving controlling interest in the company to his son Bryan Nelson.
Myers, B.A., "The User Interface for Sapphire." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 1984.
Nevertheless, Nelson was afraid he might lose Murphy and in 1984 sold a 25 percent stake to him for just $1000.
Murphy then moved to enforce the 1984 "buy-sell" agreement, calling in the stock.
The states offered changes beyond those mandated by the 1984 injunction, including disclosures regarding initial and future shipments as well as a requirement that refunds be made under certain circumstances.
Scheifler, R.W. and Gettys, J., "The X Window System." ACM Transactions on Graphics, 1986.
A useful set of resources, http://www.cs.brown.edu/memex/, includes Andy Van Dam's keynote address at the first Hypertext Conference in 1987.
A landmark achievement was the Ph.D. dissertation Suchman, L. (1987), Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge University Press, which applied ethnomethodological methods to the analysis of an expert help system.
Goldberg's 1988 volume, A History of Personal Workstations, contains transcriptions of talks by major contributors to the development of personal workstations.
An earlier journalistic account focusing more on the business context is Smith, D.K. and Alexander, R.C. (1988), Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer, William Morrow.
Another important group was at DEC, see for example Whiteside, J., Bennett, J., and Holtzblatt, K. (1988), "Usability Engineering: Our Experience and Evolution," Chapter 36 of Helander.
Myers, B.A., "A Taxonomy of User Interfaces for Window Managers." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 1988.
Linton, M.A., Vlissides, J.M., and Calder, P.R., "Composing user interfaces with InterViews." IEEE Computer, 1989.
Myers, B.A., et al., "Garnet: Comprehensive Support for Graphical, Highly-Interactive User Interfaces." IEEE Computer, 1990.
In 1990, it sold a subsidiary, MAQ Inc., a mail order company that sold home electronics and other items.
By now, the company was shipping approximately 42 million pairs of hosiery a year, roughly double the business it was doing in 1991.
1991: Bryan Nelson dies.
The Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine at University College London created the "Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine"in 1993.
A good journalistic account of the development of the Apple Macintosh is Levy, S. (1994), Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything, Penguin Books.
User testing of the Lisa conducted by Larry Tesler is described in Levy (1994) Chapter 4, and also in http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=user%20testing.
Finally, in early 1994, HCA agreed to pay $7.85 million to Nelson's estate as part of a settlement in which the three Nelson family members agreed to drop any ownership claims on HCA. They were then left to split the estate among themselves, while HCA executives returned to running the company.
1994: The company sold in a leveraged buyout.
Myers, B.A., "User Interface Software Tools." ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 1995.
HCA Enters British Market in 1995
A short excerpt from this article appeared as part of "Strategic Directions in Human Computer Interaction," edited by Brad Myers, Jim Hollan, Isabel Cruz, ACM Computing Surveys, 28(4), December 1996
An excellent overview of the history and practice of usability engineering is Butler, K.A. (1996), "Usability Engineering Turns 10," interactions, Jan.
Because of the aborted acquisition and the costs of the failed IPO, HCA reported a loss of $4.3 million in 1996.
In the summer of 1996, it looked to take the company public in order to keep it funded well enough to compete in the low-margin, high-volume hosiery business.
To settle matters with the states, HCA agreed in July 1997 to pay $300,000, to be split among the states for refunds to customers.
The move into Canada was accomplished through the 1998 acquisition of Enchantress Hosiery Corporation of Canada Ltd. at the cost of $3.9 million.
Hiltzig (1999), Chapter 14, describes how designers of the Gypsy word processor grounded their work in interviews with editors at the Ginn publishing subsidiary of Xerox.
Baecker, R., et al., "A Historical and Intellectual Perspective," in Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, Second Edition, R. Baecker, et al., Editors.
In the early months of 2002, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Interactions is a bi-monthly publication of the ACM | (c) 2022 ACM
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| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SubCom | 1955 | $300.0M | 1,105 | 129 |
| Db+ | - | $10.6B | 24,174 | 3 |
| B T S, Inc. | 2012 | $180,000 | 50 | 3 |
| Communications Electronics | - | $5.0M | 10 | - |
| United Global Com | - | - | 10,000 | 125 |
| NTCA - The Rural Broadband Association | 1954 | $7.7M | 75 | - |
| One Source Technology | - | $10.6M | 100 | 12 |
| Lyle | - | $9.5M | 60 | 3 |
| Sorensen Companies, Inc. | - | - | - | 23 |
| GME Inc. International | - | $284.9K | 5 | - |
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