Each of the links in this category is worth serious study.
From classic articles such as Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think"
and the often misapplied "Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two"
of George Miller,
to sites gathering hundreds of historical images,
there is something for any student of technological history.
The HCI History collection lets you trace the development of modern user interfaces.
In 1990, Brad Myers et al compiled a video called
All the Widgets.
It compared user interface widgets
(e.g., scroll bars, menus, palettes, etc.)
for several systems from Xerox, Apple, DEC, Maryland, etc.
In 1992, Aaron Marcus published
Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces,
a book with examples from a variety of user interfaces.
More recently, some web sites have continued with this idea:
These are wonderful sites with hundreds or thousands of examples.
- A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology
Brad A. Myers
- arCHIve: A look back at SIGCHI
Steven Pemberton
2001-11-21
steven.pemberton@cwi.nl
Interviews with past chairs of SIGCHI and other people about the development of the group.
- As We May Think
Vannevar Bush
1945-07
- Bootstrap Institute
United States, California, Freemont
Douglas Engelbart
webmaster@bootstrap.org
"help organizations transform into high-performance organizations"
Contains links to many pioneering publications.
- Cognitive Science Celebrities
Martin Ryder
2002-04-04
mryder@carbon.cudenver.edu
Writings by and about leading thinkers in cognitive science, and critics and observers
of the philosophy of mind.
- Dan Bricklin's History Pages
Dan Bricklin
2002-11-01
History of VisiCalc and links to other personal computing history sites.
- evolt.org - Browser Archive
Adrian Roselli
2003-02-25
Archived versions of many browsers.
- Graphical User Interface Gallery
Nathan Lineback
2005-05-18
Screenshots of graphical user interfaces including a GUI timeline.
- GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery
Marcin Wichary
2005-05-11
mwichary@aresluna.org
Website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces,
as well as various materials related to them.
- History of Artificial Intelligence
2002-04-04
AAAI
The intellectual roots of AI, and the concept of intelligent machines, may be found in
Greek mythology. Intelligent artifacts appear in literature since then, with real (and
fraudulent) mechanical devices actually demonstrating behaviour with some degree of
intelligence. After modern computers became available following World War II, it has become
possible to create programs that perform difficult intellectual tasks. Even more
importantly, general purpose methods and tools have been created that allow similar tasks
to be performed.
- History of the graphical user interface
English
2007-08-09
The graphical user interface, or "GUI", is a computer interface that uses graphic icons and controls in addition to text. The user of the computer utilizes a pointing device, like a mouse, to manipulate these icons and controls. This is considerably different from the command line interface (CLI) in which the user types a series of text commands to the computer.
- Illustrative Risks to the Public in the Use of Computer Systems and Related Technology
Peter G. Neumann
2007-01-24
SRI International
- Internet Archive = Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
- MouseSite
HF.RFR@Forsythe.stanford.edu
"a resource for exploring the history of human computer interaction"
Contains links to many pioneering publications.
- PARC's Legacy
United States, California, Palo Alto
2002-04-02
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
In 1970, Xerox Corporation gathered together a team of world-class researchers and gave
them the mission of creating "the architecture of information."
- Photo History of CHI
Ben Shneiderman
2002-08-11
photohistory@cs.umd.edu
Photos from 1982-2001. Created using PhotoFinderWeb by the University of Maryland
Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
- Pocket Calculator Show
2002-07-25
to collect and celebrate personal memories of all integrated circuit-based consumer
products from the electronics revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
- The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:
Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information
George A. Miller
1956
My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven
years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most
private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public
journals. This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a
little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never
changing so much as to be unrecognizable. The persistence with which
this number plagues me is far more than a random accident. There is, to
quote a famous senator, a design behind it, some pattern governing its
appearances. Either there really is something unusual about the number
or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution.
I shall begin my case history by telling you about some experiments
that tested how accurately people can assign numbers to the magnitudes
of various aspects of a stimulus. In the traditional language of
psychology these would be called experiments in absolute judgment.
Historical accident, however, has decreed that they should have another
name. We now call them experiments on the capacity of people to
transmit information. Since these experiments would not have been done
without the appearance of information theory on the psychological
scene, and since the results are analyzed in terms of the concepts of
information theory, I shall have to preface my discussion with a few
remarks about this theory.
- Timeline of Hypertext History
Jorn Barger
2002-04-02
Divides history into a series of ages (writing, printing, electricity, big iron,
network, mico, WYSIWYG, hypertext, WWWeb, Netscape, Hype).
- Top HCI Research Laboratories
Jakob Nielsen
2002-03-31
useit.com
A core group of elite corporate research labs (and a few universities)
defined the field of human-computer interaction and established much of
whatever ease of use we now enjoy. With big labs disappearing, the future of
HCI research is in jeopardy.
- Vision and Reality of Hypertext and Graphical User Interfaces
Germany, Hamburg
Matthias Muller-Prove
2002-10-23
Sun Microsystems
mprove@acm.org
What happened to the original vision to create a personal dynamic medium for creative thought?
Retrospect reveals promising insights that might help to reconcile the desktop environment with the Web
in order to design a consistent and powerful way to interact with the computer.