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The Xerox Alto is one of the first personal computers (a term that was already coined at the time), a general purpose computer designed for individual use (although not as a home computer). However it was expensive and, unlike modern personal computers, not based on a microprocessor. It was developed at Xerox PARC and released on March 1, 1973.〔http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=292762〕 It was the first computer to use a desktop metaphor,〔Thacker, Charles P., et al. (Alto: A personal computer. ) Xerox, Palo Alto Research Center, 1979. The main goals in the design of the Alto's user input/output were generality of the facilities and simplicity of the hardware. We also attached a high value to modeling the capabilities of existing manual media; after all, these have evolved over many hundreds of years. There are good reasons for most of their characteristics, and much has been learned about how to use them effectively. The manual media we chose as models were paper and ink (the display), pointing devices (the mouse and cursor), and keyboard devices ranging from typewriters to pianos and organs.〕 first commercialized on the later Xerox Star, and one of the first with a mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI) after Douglas Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS)〔 〕 and several other innovations in user interfaces of the time. It was not a commercial product, but several thousand units were built and were heavily used at PARC, other Xerox facilities, and at several universities for many years. The Alto greatly influenced the design of personal computers in the following decades, notably the Apple Macintosh and the first Sun workstations. ==History== The Alto was conceived in 1972 in a memo written by Butler Lampson, inspired by the oN-Line System (NLS) developed by Douglas Engelbart at SRI, and was designed primarily by Chuck Thacker. Industrial Design and manufacturing was sub-contracted to Xerox, El Segundo, whose Special Programs Group team included Doug Stewart as Program Manager, Abbey Silverstone Operations, Bob Nishimura, Industrial Designer. An initial run of 30 units was produced by Xerox, El Segundo (Special Programs Group), working with John Ellenby at Xerox PARC and Doug Stewart Xerox, El Segundo as well as Abbey Silverstone at Xerox El Segundo, who were responsible for re-designing the Alto’s electronics. Due to the success of the pilot run, the team went on to produce approximately 2,000 units over the next ten years.〔“The History of the Xerox Alto”. Carl J. Clement. March, 2002.〕 Several Xerox Alto chassis are now on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, and a running system is on display at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington. For his pioneering design and realization of the Alto, Charles P. Thacker was awarded the 2009 Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery on March 9, 2010. The 2004 Charles Stark Draper Prize was awarded to Thacker, Alan C. Kay, Butler Lampson, and Robert W. Taylor for their work on Alto.〔("2004 Recipients of the Charles Stark Draper Prize" )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Xerox Alto」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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