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About Word Processors

·22 min·1 clip

One Hungarian immigrant connected the dots from 1968's vision to Mac and Windows

The episode opens by asking what a word processor really is. It draws a line between dedicated machines and general-purpose computers. In the older model, the machine exists only to process text. By the mid-1970s, these systems were already a substantial business. Some had very limited screens. One remembered example is a version with only a single-line LCD. In 1978, Lexatron added a full-size CRT monitor and smaller five and a quarter inch floppy disks. Wang Laboratories also became closely associated with word processors for a time. But those machines are not the end point the episode is after. It keeps narrowing the definition until it reaches software running on a computer that does other jobs too. That is where Bravo enters. Bravo is presented as the first what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing system on a multi-purpose computer, the Xerox Alto. It was created at Xerox PARC by Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi, and colleagues in 1974. The episode connects that work to the earlier mouse demonstrations from Engelbart. The mouse is used to mark locations in the text. Users select a start point and an end point, then issue commands against that selection. Bravo is also described as a modal editor. Insert mode and command mode do different jobs. In insert mode, the user enters text and then presses escape to place it into the selected area. Selection required clicking twice, because dragging the cursor while holding the mouse down was not yet the standard gesture. The episode uses that detail to show how familiar editing habits had to be invented. The result is a clear history of how text editing became visual, pointable, and software-based.

As heard by us

A focused history of word processing systems leading to Bravo.

This episode follows word processors from dedicated office machines to the software shift that made text feel editable on a screen. It keeps its focus on the lineage: single-purpose systems, limited screens, Wang's market moment, then Bravo on the Xerox Alto as the real turning…

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Meet Bravo, the first what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing system on a multi-purpose desktop computer.

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