[SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in computing?

Mon Mar 17 10:26:47 PDT 2014

Hi, Laine

FWIW, I recall menus in games - in the sames of an up-front, mid-screen 
panel listing options such as 'new game', 'load saved game', etc. - in 
titles going back to the very early 1980s and beyond. Even before anyone 
but Xerox and computer science academics were aware of what we today 
call menus (ie. drop-downs and pop-ups).

Indeed, if you look back at ealry 1970s games like Star Trek, Hunt the 
Wumpus, Colossal Cave, they generally presented a numbered list of 
options - hit the appropriate number key to make a selection - as soon 
as the game was run.

Tony Smith
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=archaeologic

On 17/03/2014 16:44, Laine Nooney wrote:
> Very helpful, Tom and William, thank you. I'm especially interested in 
> Tom's suggestion re: the general use of a menu as an efficient 
> alternative to a command line--are there any specific resources anyone 
> knows of that could offer a citation on that observation?
>
> for those interested, the 1996 Federal Standard 1037C (the Glossary of 
> Telecommunication Terms) defines a menu as "a displayed list of 
> options from which a user selects actions to be performed." (ATIS 
> adopted this definition without change). The specificity of "list" is 
> one of the ways games are confounding in this context, as games often 
> replace what could be expressed in a list with lush manipulable 
> simulations.
>
> best,
>
> Laine Nooney
> Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory
> Stony Brook University
>
> Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual Culture
> vcu.sagepub.com <http://vcu.sagepub.com/>
>
> www.lainenooney.com <http://www.lainenooney.com>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 16, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org 
> <mailto:thaigh at computer.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hello everyone,
>
>     Pop up and pull down menus had a specific genesis in the
>     PARC/Xerox/Apple
>     trajectory of GUI work and have been an object of historical
>     curiosity. IIRC
>     PARC had popup menus and Apple added pull down menus.
>
>     In contrast, menus in general are a fairly fundamental concept in
>     interactive computing and I suspect would have appeared very early
>     in the
>     development of commands and applications for timesharing systems. The
>     alternative to a menu was a command line system, but these
>     required commands
>     to be typed with no mistakes in exactly the right syntax. A menu
>     guided
>     users through valid options, which reduced the error rate and
>     effectively
>     let "help" information be integrated with the entry of commands.
>     Menus could
>     be used with teletypes as well as VDUs.
>
>     So my personal guess on the origin of menus would be in a very early
>     interactive system such as MIT's CTSS, RAND's JOSS, or something
>     from SDC.
>     If you are interested in a specific "first" you would also need to
>     develop a
>     clear definition of "menu" to distinguish it from a command prompt.
>
>     Best wishes,
>
>     Tom
>
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: members-bounces at sigcis.org
>     <mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org>
>     [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org
>     <mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org>] On
>     Behalf Of William McMillan
>     Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 3:42 PM
>     To: Laine Nooney; sigcis
>     Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in
>     computing?
>
>     Hello, Laine.
>
>     Menus were central to the UI of UCSD Pascal, Ken Bowles's project
>     in the
>     1970s.  Bowles talked with Steve Jobs int he early days (and
>     later, Gates)
>     and some of the students who worked on UCSD Pascal went to Apple and
>     influenced the development of the Lisa etc.  Apple Pascal (an OS
>     as well as
>     a programming environment) for the Apple II was UCSD Pascal.
>
>     There are a lot of good web resources on UCSD Pascal, and I had a
>     magazine
>     article on its history in IEEE Spectrum.
>
>     This was certainly an early and influential deployment of a
>     menu-driven UI.
>     Games were developed in UCSD Pascal, but I don't know if they were
>     notable
>     at all.
>
>     - Bill
>     - Hide quoted text -
>
>     On 3/15/14, Laine Nooney <laine.nooney at gmail.com
>     <mailto:laine.nooney at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     > Hi all,
>     >
>     > I'm currently pulling together a short essay for a game history
>     > lexicon on the emergence of the menu in games. This topic is running
>     > me a bit in circles--menus seem to be one of those components
>     that are
>     > so "obvious," or taken for granted in the game dev realm, that they
>     > aren't deeply, explicitly talked about.
>     >
>     > I'm wondering what the respective literature around "menus" might be
>     > in the history of computing. Are there obvious touchstones or
>     > definitive transitions to be aware of (especially beyond the visible
>     > PARC/Apple/Windows GUI histories)?
>     >
>     > And to be clear, I'm trying to keep this distinct from UI issues
>     > (insofar as that's possible!)
>     >
>     > Any leads, food for thought, or general chatter would be much
>     appreciated!
>     >
>     > Best,
>     >
>     > Laine Nooney
>     > Department of Cultural Analysis and Theory Stony Brook University
>     >
>     > Editorial Assistant to the Journal of Visual Culture
>     vcu.sagepub.com <http://vcu.sagepub.com>
>     >
>     > www.lainenooney.com <http://www.lainenooney.com>
>     >
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