The 1972 Xerox Alto: The Worlds First Internet PC

Photo: Michael Hick/Flickr

The year was 1972 and everything was perfectly normal. People sent text messages through snail mail, watched 3-5 local channels on broadcast TV. Movies on demand were viewed in theaters, mostly paid for things in cash at places called "retail stores" you had to physically get to, listened to music on tiny AM pocket radios with earphones and "downloaded" the latest pop singles from something called a "record store" on 7" polystyrene discs. Social media was done over the telephone. Perfectly normal.

Or was it? (I can't tell anymore. 47 years of change can do that.)

Computers as we know them today were mostly things you saw on science fiction TV shows and movies. And endless "World of Tomorrow" promotional films and magazine/newspaper articles.


But in reality, most computers back then were giant, cumbersome mainframe things that took up a very sizable portion of a very large room.

"GET OFF THE INTERNET!! I NEED TO USE THE PHONE!!" Photo: neweggbusiness.com

But at Xerox laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, a revolution was happening. It was our second major step in what would become the modern PC of today. The first was the development of ARPANET by the US government for the military in 1969, the genesis of the modern internet.

The second was the Xerox Alto.

It boasted the first e-mail, ethernet, local networking with printer and outside networks to other Alto computers via dial-up and even radio networking. Even ARPANET. It had the very first graphical user interface (GUI) and even the first mouse. Years before Apple even existed. It ran using a 5.8 MHz CPU, 128kb of RAM memory and 14" 2.5 MB removable cartridge hard drives

The software selection included:

- The first word processing programs.
- The first e-mail clients
- The first bitmap (photo) editors and paint/drawing programs
- FTP and chat (This was the earliest internet, so it was nearly all text. Graphics were few, in black and white and highly primitive and low quality. There was little audio support. Or anything really resembling social media outside a circle of super rich geeks.)  
- Games including Pinball, Chess, Othello and even the first network based, multi-person video game, Alto Trek
- OfficeTalk, the first computer generated office forms system.
- Support for many early computer programming languages.

Oddly, there were no spreadsheet programs. The first, VisiCalc, wasn't invented until 1979.

The Xerox Alto was destined to revolutionize the world. Or at least the 1974 TV commercial for it looked good.

You were probably thinking looking at the first photo "Where's the big beige tower for this thing?". Here it is, the size of a mini-refrigerator, it took 14" 2.5 MB "disk" cartridges a little bigger than the size of an LP record. Photo: history-computer.com

It first went on sale in 1973.

So why didn't the Xerox Alto launch us into the internet age in the 1970s?

Mouse for the Xerox Alto.

First, it was far from perfected for average commercial home consumer use. So it never really left experimental status.

Second, the price of one of these units was $100,000 in 1973 money. That works out to about $570,000 in 2019 money. The average 3 bedroom family home costed roughly around $25,000 in 1973.

Third, only about 2,000 were made.

And finally, only high end computer labs, corporations and government were able to get an Alto. Or afford one.

But it left an impression on Apple's Steve Jobs, who visited Xerox in 1979 and quickly began to design a system that would first be called the Apple Lisa, then the Macintosh (or Mac) which was the first home computer to incorporate a GUI interface and mouse. Jobs also hired away several key Xerox employees to help design his system.

Xerox also got into the home computing game in 1981. But their lowest price home computer, the Xerox 820 lacked the GUI interface and mouse of the Alto. It was a major opportunity squandered in favor of a lower consumer price and manufacturing cost.

But home computing was still a comparatively rare (and very expensive) thing. And would be throughout most of the 1980s. And by the time Xerox got into the home computing market, several competitors were already established, including Apple. Xerox soon realized how late they were and eventually abandoned the home computing market to focus on other products.

How To Get The Alto Experience in 2019


The easiest way is through the online ContrAlto emulator. Bear in mind this takes 20-30 seconds to boot and load programs (it really is an emulator, right down to original speed.) It is buggy on Firefox 66.02, although I haven't tried it on Chrome.

This was about as far as I got.

You can find a Windows emulator program for Alto here. The site also has the C# source code. Another, SALTO, looks more promising to Linux users.

The I-5 Skagit River Bridge Collapse

On May 23, 2013, the Skagit River Bridge between Mount Vernon and Burlington, WA collapsed, illustrating the dire need for improved maintenance and upgrading of America's highway system.

A year ago tonight, no one could have guessed a near tragedy was about to occur.

It was a typical late spring night in the Skagit Valley of Washington State. An idyllic place this time of year, very laid back and the end of the evening rush hour was winding down and people were coming home to enjoy their evenings.  Yours Truly had just crossed this very bridge only a few hours earlier.

Suddenly at 7:00pm, a truck carrying an oversize load rammed a lower truss at the entry point of the southbound lanes of the Skagit River Bridge on Interstate 5, causing the north section of the bridge to buckle and destabilize off it's pilings. The truck which caused the accident successfully crossed the bridge. The vehicles behind the truck weren't so lucky.

Fortunately, aside from a few minor injuries and ruined vehicles, no one was killed.

But it magnified a long festering problem with America's highway bridges; Many are dangerously old, obsolete, and long in need of upgrading and replacement.

The news shocked America and made headlines worldwide. But none were shocked more than the people of Skagit County and it's two most populous cities, Mount Vernon and Burlington which were connected by the bridge. The bridge was also a vital trade and travel link between Vancouver, Canada and Seattle.  

The I-5 Skagit River Bridge was long overdue for a modern replacement and considered functionally obsolete. Built in 1955, it was constructed at a time when there were far fewer vehicles on America's highways. The truss height at the bridge's southbound entry was 14'7" The height of the truck trailer was several inches higher.

The southbound portion of the I-5 Skagit River Bridge just before the collapse. The truck was in the outer lane and struck the curved truss.

The trucker was employed by Mullen Trucking, was hauling an over-dimensional load containing a housing for drilling equipment. The company's vice-president, Ed Sherbinski, said permits were issued from Washington State that included clearance for all bridge crossings on the route.The truck had been led over the bridge by a pilot escort vehicle. A spokesman for the Washington State Department of Transportation said there are no warning signs leading up to the bridge regarding its clearance height. In Washington, only overcrossings of less than 14 feet are required to have advance postings of height restrictions.
The oversize truck also damaged a sway strut of the second span, but not enough to initiate a collapse. That span is being repaired, and all three remaining spans are returning to full use. (Wikipedia)

Inspectors inspecting the Canadian semi which caused the bridge collapse.

It was a miserable summer of taking slow detours, exiting on College Way in Mount Vernon and George Hopper Rd. in Burlington to take the Riverside bridge and getting back on I-5 from either side. Traffic was snarled from Everett to Bellingham, WA as a result.


We never did get the brand new permanent bridge we were promised (It was a battle with the Canadian insurance company to get what we were owed.) All we got was a replacement section.

Today, the bridge has been renamed the Trooper Sean O'Connell Memorial Bridge, after a state trooper who was killed while directing traffic around the bridge.

The Day After

You know? One of the TV movies I REALLY wanted to watch was "The Day After".

For those too young to remember, in 1983, The United States and the then Soviet Union, now Russia today, were at more or less the peak of the Cold War in the 1980s. And both were nuclear powers. And both were unflinching.

And they were the biggest. Ever. "The Arms Race" as it was known guaranteed something known as M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction.)  

It seemed like at the slightest provocation, no matter how minute, could set either side off. Sending unholy nuclear holocaust in either direction.

But the public reality was both sides HATED what their respective governments were doing. That's the odd thing about governments. They claim to speak for their respective people in international affairs, but they haven't the foggiest idea of what the respective people under them actually WANT.

Most of us back in high school wondered why don't we just simply get together over a beer and talk about it (The reality was we really wanted them to get together over a BONG and talk about it. In those days, the very subject of marijuana here in the very Land Of The Free was unspeakable in public high schools.) The mellowing effects of weed we felt would have been far more beneficial in that regard. After the language barrier, the rest would come easy.

ABC-TV aired this program on November 20, 1983 with much hype and it was THE movie to watch on that particular night. EVERYONE was talking about it. Be There...or Be There. That kind of thing.)

I never saw it.

My mom was content with what I thought was her "fuddy old people" shows and we argued for HOURS over it. I hated her for that. And EVERYONE was talking about it the next day after it aired and here I was, the lone idiot who never watched it. Costed me unbelievable high school social points for the next few weeks!

FINALLY, last year, 30 YEARS LATER. I finally got to watch that whole movie....On YouTube!


I am now complete.