Interview wtth inventor of hypercard Bill Atkinson

Alejandro Tejada capellan2000 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 19 16:24:03 EDT 2017


Tom Glod wrote:
> Here is a great interview with Bill..... in which he reveals ....
> among other things...... that when he invented Hypercard he was ....

If you ask Walter Cooke, he answers:

"I too miss HyperCard, but I also used Xerox's Notecards software BEFORE
Bill invented Apple's version for the Macintosh.

Google "Xerox Notecards" to read some history of where the concept and OO
implementation originated. Poor Xerox - they invented so much but couldn't
market their way out of a wet paper bag. A lot of educators were very
impressed with Notecards and wanted at their universities real bad. The
military loved it for buiding real-time visual simulations. I wanted to use
it for building bond trading software. Unfortunately Xerox workstation cost
$30K apiece at that time!

I remember arguing with Andy Hertzfeld at the '87 MacWorld Expo where
HyperCard was announced and demoed on the sexy new Mac II. He was adamant
that HyperCard bore no resemblance to Notecards, but grudgingly agreed that
he HAD seen Notecards at Xerox and knew what it was. Hmmm.."

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/04/03/31/1550216/hypercard-gone-for-good

BUT if you ask Paul Heckel, he would say:
"Zoomracks was first..."

http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv2n3/hypercard.html

And now that I remember Paul Heckel, read about his winning lawsuit against
Apple for patent-infringement:
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/20/business/apple-is-said-to-settle-suit.html

Al



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