Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Larry Tesler, Creator of Copy, Cut and Paste Function, Dies at 74
KSBW ^ | Feb 20, 2020 | Chris Isidore, Scottie Andrew and Mirna Alsharif

Posted on 02/20/2020 10:53:10 PM PST by nickcarraway

Larry Tesler, a pioneer of personal computing credited with creating the cut, copy and paste as well as the search and replace functions, has died. He was 74.

Tesler was not nearly as well known as computing giants such as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But he played an early, central role in making computers accessible to people without computer engineering degrees, i.e. most of us.

Xerox, the company for whom he developed the functions, tweeted out news of his death. "Your workday is easier thanks to his revolutionary ideas," the company's tweet said.

Cut, copy and paste and search and replace functions are used millions of times a day without users thinking twice about how they were developed or by whom.

But before Tesler's work, computer users had to interact with clunky programs in different "modes," where the same commands meant different things depending on how they were used. Even an expert like Tesler found that to be a problem.

"Most interactive programs had modes, which always tripped me up," he wrote in a 2012 paper about the development of copy, cut and paste. Tesler became a champion of eliminating modes from computer programs. His personal web site was nomodes.com.

(Excerpt) Read more at ksbw.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; History
KEYWORDS: cut; cutandpaste; eip; larrytesler; lisa; nomodes; obituary; paste; rip; sail; stanfordailab; tesler; xerox; xeroxparc
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last
To: nickcarraway
Larry Tessler...

Control + Alt + Delete

21 posted on 02/21/2020 1:02:13 AM PST by zeestephen
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nateman

He already moved to Apple in 1980, so his work at Xerox PARC was well before that.


22 posted on 02/21/2020 1:09:54 AM PST by nickcarraway
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway; All; goldbux
Larry Tesler was a contemporary of mine. He worked for a while (1970 – 1971) at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), 1600 Arastradero Road, in the hills above Stanford. Larry made many innovative contributions to interactive text editing. R.I.P., Larry.

Many brilliant mathematicians & researchers worked there, creating much of modern computer science. Professor John McCarthy [formerly with MIT] created the lab, staffed it, worked there, and taught graduate-level classes. John was a very influential AI pioneer. He famously invented / discovered LISP (List Processing Language) in 1955. Because of its almost total lack of syntax, it's naturally recursive. LISP source code structure is identical to LISP data. Everything is just a list – a string of delimited symbols bounded by parentheses. Lists can contain other lists, deeply nested. Since LISP code can modify itself by manipulating lists, it has an innate recursiveness – like the fundamental level of neuroplasticity. LISP became the programming language of choice for Artificial Intelligence research & development.

I was very lucky & privileged to take all of his classes. I learned LISP from John himself, along with other grad students [like Tesler] who also worked on projects at SAIL. The Lab had its own programming language, SAIL – Stanford Artificial Intelligence Language. It had an ALGOL-like syntax, and many features that later became ubiquitous, like Pieces of Glass (POGs) – the precursor to Windows. Invoking a Piece of Glass was equivalent to opening a new window, except that POGs were transparent not opaque.

Much of the TCP/IP Internet protocols were developed at SAIL [under DARPA research funding]. Chunking data into relatively small "packets" that could be transmitted asynchronously in any order, then stitched back together in correct sequence, was a fundamental building block of Internet communication.

Other luminaries at the Lab included Alan Kay, who created the [object-oriented] smalltalk programming language. He also essentially created the design for a portable, folding, personal computer; half keyboard, half screen. Alan became an Apple Fellow.

Whitfield Diffie worked on cryptography. He developed – along with Martin Hellman – the Diffie-Hellman key-exchange algorithm, using Elliptic Curve math to enable public-key cryptography [1976].

Ron Rivest is another Stanford Computer Science PhD & SAIL cryptographer alumnus, who is the R in RSA Security.

Similarly with Rodney Brooks, who worked on Robotics. He invented & produced the Roomba vacuum cleaner.

There was a continuing interchange of ideas among programmers at SAIL, Xerox PARC [Palo Alto Research Center], & SRI [Stanford Research Institute]. Doug Englebart invented [1968] the mouse as a pointing & control device.

Perhaps the intellectual giant with the strongest claim to creating the pillars of modern computer science is Professor Don Knuth, author of the multi-volume Art of Computer Science. He is now Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Science. Stanford honored him with the distinguished Stanford Hero award [2011] for lifetime achievement.

23 posted on 02/21/2020 1:31:44 AM PST by goldbux (No sufficiently rich interpreted language can represent its own semantics. — Alfred Tarski, 1936)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler
Larry Tesler

Hey, copy and paste still works. Thanks Larry.


24 posted on 02/21/2020 1:50:10 AM PST by HarleyD
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HarleyD

A fitting eulogy.


25 posted on 02/21/2020 2:45:25 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Every election, more or less, is an advance auction of stolen goods. - H. L. Mencken)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Crtl-X and Ctrl-V

Wore those buttons out on more than one keyboard.

Seems like a minor function, but it is everything.


26 posted on 02/21/2020 2:50:04 AM PST by VanDeKoik
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Millions of college students morn his passing. They never would have gotten through their term papers without the feature he invented.


27 posted on 02/21/2020 3:04:03 AM PST by Tallguy (Facts be d@mned! The narrative must be protected at all costs!))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

Blind as a bat, two-fingered typists everywhere wish you Godspeed, Mr. Tesler! Thank you very much!


28 posted on 02/21/2020 3:06:39 AM PST by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

copy *.* c:\

I sort of remember the 9 commands we had in DOS 2 or 3; can’t remember. Been a while... since ‘89 or ‘89 on an IBM PS2/50 box.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DOS_commands


29 posted on 02/21/2020 3:36:00 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Mariner

I miss WordPerfect.


30 posted on 02/21/2020 3:59:51 AM PST by wally_bert (Your methods were a little incomplete, you too for that matter.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: fproy2222
This great man has saved the WORLD from many wasted hours of repetitious typing!

I; for one; am eternally grateful!

31 posted on 02/21/2020 4:08:02 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Ken H

GROAN!


32 posted on 02/21/2020 4:09:01 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: zeestephen
Jobs saw everything, but the only thing he remembered was being completely mesmerized by the Xerox computer mouse.

A movable trackball?

http://computermouse.umwblogs.org/invention/

33 posted on 02/21/2020 4:11:43 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Telepathic Intruder
I never even knew there was a person associated with it. Think of how much time and work my fingers were saved. Now he’s gone to that great clipboard in the sky.

As someone who works in IT, let me just say there is a person associated with every function. :-)

34 posted on 02/21/2020 4:16:33 AM PST by snippy_about_it
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

I thought it originated in EMACS, using the concept of the point and the range, i.e. placing a point before one byte in RAM, setting another point further in RAM and the region between providing a range. THe copy function was a CntlC command to copy that range into a buffer. THe CntlP command would then paste the range into a location specified by a new point in an open text file.

EMACS also had some time saving cut and past fcns, by word, line, paragraph, using the keypad, made editing so much easier.


35 posted on 02/21/2020 4:24:57 AM PST by Cvengr ( Adversity in life & death is inevitable; Stress is optional through faith in Christ.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Telepathic Intruder

http://nomodes.com/pub_manual.html


36 posted on 02/21/2020 4:33:29 AM PST by Cvengr ( Adversity in life & death is inevitable; Stress is optional through faith in Christ.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: zeestephen

“Control + Alt + Delete”

Righteously valuable function.


37 posted on 02/21/2020 4:39:58 AM PST by moovova
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: goldbux

Wow, I am impressed by what you wrote. Congratulations on having had a great career side by side with such luminaries.


38 posted on 02/21/2020 5:21:19 AM PST by nwrep
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway

His developments have saved me huge amounts of time and effort over the years, and have always been among my favorite computer features. Well done, sir, and RIP.


39 posted on 02/21/2020 5:22:38 AM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wally_bert

Reveal codes, reveal codes, reveal codes! As told to me by my Word Perfect instructor.


40 posted on 02/21/2020 5:29:44 AM PST by ops33 (SMSgt, USAF, Retired)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson