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

Fri Mar 21 10:16:21 PDT 2014

Hello,
Menus were used in Murray Turoff's early computer conferencing systems starting in 1969/1970. Menus were also used in the HCL 8C microcomputer (India, 1978) as a way to provide an easy alternative to typing in the JCL on the keyboard. I can provide references, if needed.
Regards,
-Ramesh

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ramesh Subramanian, Ph.D.
Gabriel Ferrucci Professor of Computer Information Systems
Quinnipiac University
Hamden, CT 06518.
Phone: 203-582-5276
Email: ramesh.subramanian at quinnipiac.edu<mailto:ramesh.subramanian at quinnipiac.edu>
Web: Ramesh Subramanian's web page<http://www.quinnipiac.edu/about/directory/faculty-detail?Dept=16&Person=23345>
&
Visiting Fellow, Information Society Project
Yale Law School
New Haven, CT 06511
Email: ramesh.subramanian at yale.edu<mailto:ramesh.subramanian at yale.edu>
Web: http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/9841.htm

Recent books:
Access to Knowledge in India: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Development<http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/AccessKnowledgeIndia_9781849665568/book-ba-9781849665568.xml> (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011)
The Global Flow of Information: Legal, Social and Cultural Perspectives<https://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=1269> (NYU Press, 2011)

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"
Mahatma Gandhi

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:23 PM
To: 'Laine Nooney'; 'sigcis'
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in computing?

Hello everyone,

Following on my earlier comments, the idea that computers have "users" with user interfaces or interactive dialogs only really goes mainstream in business data processing circles in the 1970s. A nice snapshot of the emerging conventional wisdom is given in J. Martin, Design of Man-Computer Dialogues. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Martin was a prolific author of books on business computing technology.

On menus vs. command lines, a command line system would typically involve typing a command word followed, in many cases, by some parameters. There would very often be a "help" command that would list valid commands.

A menu is, in its most primitive form, basically the same thing except that the help is displayed by default and the commands are short (usually one or two characters) so that the system will prompt for any further parameters or options needed. I remember a lot of terminal oriented menu systems involved two letter command codes.

Laine is probably too young to remember browsing the web in a text terminal window using the Lynx browser. That turned the web into a menu system, not unlike Gopher. It is still possible to get around Windows with keyboard shortcuts.

Tom

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org> [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Laine Nooney
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2014 11:45 AM
To: sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Resources re: history of menus in computing?

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>
>
_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<mailto:members at sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of
SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/
and you can change your subscription options at
http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<mailto:members at sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20140321/923f65af/attachment-0001.htm>