Larry Tesler
Computer pioneer who invented the ‘cut and paste’ function and coined the phrase ‘user-friendly’
LARRY TESLER, who has died in California aged 74, was among the chief architects of the way we now use computers. Those in the industry knew him as the creator of design features such as cut-and-paste. Yet his true impact was in helping turn computers from business machines aimed at skilled technicians into appliances easily operated by anyone. He was credited with coining the phrase “user-friendly”.
In 1973, following work at Stanford’s artificial intelligence laboratory, Tesler took a job at the Palo Alto Research Center (Parc) of Xerox, the copier company.
While waiting to start, he wrote a program for printing documents more accurately. This included commands to the computer that were apparent on the screen but not on the printed page. This was perhaps the first instance of formatting and of what is now known as mark-up language.
Tesler worked on Gypsy, a program for creating text documents on Xerox’s pioneering but hefty word-processors. Although these were the first to use on-screen graphics for functions instead of typed commands, the obligation to switch between modes for different operations such as editing and inputting was offputting, especially to novices.
Tesler was so keen to get rid of this that he had a T-shirt and licence plate (and eventually a Twitter account) bearing the words “NO MODES”. His solution was to make all modes always available, so that text could be inserted by simply clicking with a mouse at the chosen point on the screen.
Next, he took a secretary, Sylvia Adams, seated her in front of a screen and asked her what she would like to be able to do with a document. From this came such innovations as selecting text by dragging a cursor and cutting-andpasting. Another term which Tesler created was “WYSIWYG”: what you see (on the screen) is what you get (on the page).
He later worked on Xerox’s project for a portable computer, developing for it a system to search software that he called a browser. While taking the computer to show to executives, he and Mott became the first people to switch one on at an airport – San Francisco – and in-flight.
But Xerox’s attention was focused on the threat from Asian manufacturers of cheap copiers and the idea foundered. Somebody else, however, was interested: Steve Jobs.
In 1979, in return for Xerox having an option to buy shares in
Apple, its staff were shown around Parc. Jobs was astonished not only that its engineers had created features such as WYSIWYG and cut-and-paste but also that Xerox had not appreciated their potential.
The following year, Tesler made a speech at an industry conference revealing Xerox’s innovations. With no trade secrets to protect, he was subsequently able to join Apple, which he realised was about to revolutionise personal computing.
He worked on the Apple Lisa, which incorporated much of Parc’s development of windows, icons and, at Tesler’s suggestion, a mouse with a single button. Although it was a relative failure, Lisa led to Apple’s first success, the Macintosh.
In the 1990s, Tesler ran the firm’s bid to create a hand-held computer, Newton. Its poor sales were blamed on mistakes he had made, and he left Apple. Even so, Newton spurred two other key innovations – the ARM microprocessors which became the industry standard, and the technology behind wi-fi.
The second of three children, Lawrence Gordon Tesler was born in New York on April 24 1945. His father was an anaesthetist.
Larry became fascinated by computers when he saw them used on television in the mid-1950s to forecast the outcome of a presidential election. While at the Bronx High School of Science he devised an algorithm for generating prime numbers.
This led to his being given time on the computer at Columbia University before, aged 16, he went to Stanford to read Mathematics. He then became a freelance programmer. One commission was calculating the predicted spread of nuclear fallout.
However, at the end of the 1960s his marriage to his college sweetheart collapsed. He decided to move with his daughter to rural Oregon. But it transpired that the only computer within 50 miles belonged to a bank – and they were not hiring. This led him back to California and Xerox.
Tesler had been involved in the counter-culture movement and his low public profile stemmed from being an idealist, an enthusiast for the democratising possibilities of science, rather than an entrepreneur like Jobs. After Apple he started a company selling education software, but this became a victim of the dotcom crash. He then worked for Amazon, for whom he developed the book preview feature, and for Yahoo!
Larry Tesler is survived by his second wife Colleen and by his daughter.
Larry Tesler, born April 24 1945, died February 16 2020