Security News > 2020 > February > Larry Tesler, of copy-and-paste fame, dies at 74

Larry Tesler, the computer scientist who is widely credited with the copy-and-paste function that is now nearly ubiquitous in user interfaces, has died at 74.

Old-timers in the computer industry will tell you that "Everything that we take for granted in computing these days was invented at PARC", and there's a grain of truth in that rose-tinted reminiscence.

At least, they could do those things if [a] they had their own computers, [b] those computers were easy to use, the computers could be interconnected reliably, [d] the computers could be programmed easily, and [e] if they had printers that were kind of like copiers, but didn't need an original document to copy from.

So the researchers at PARC came up with, and learned to program and use, a whole raft of technologies that we do now take for granted - such as ethernet networking, object-oriented programming, laser printers, personal computers, bitmapped screens, square pixels, GUIs, a mouse to control them, and, of course.

Tesler wanted to know, do we have so much computer software where keystrokes and mouse clicks change their meaning depending on where you are in the program?

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/21/larry-tesler-of-copy-and-paste-fame-dies-at-74/