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As part of its ongoing celebration of Apple’s 50th anniversary, <b>CHM curator Dr Hansen Hsu</b> surveys our remarkable collection of Apple prototypes:
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<a rel="nofollow" href="https://computerhistory.org/blog/apple-history-in-prototypes/" style="text-decoration: none" draggable="false"><font color="#272727" style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847059);">Apple History in Prototypes</font></a></div>
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<div>Prototypes as objects for historians to study can offer some interesting benefits:</div>
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<p data-path-to-node="8" id="p-rc_6f286bdf47007152-19"><span class="citation-1 citation-end-1">1. Historians can interact with prototypes to "re-experience" the constraints of a past era.<source-footnote ng-version="0.0.0-PLACEHOLDER" _nghost-ng-c1174560320=""><sup _ngcontent-ng-c1174560320="" class="superscript" data-turn-source-index="1"></sup></source-footnote></span> By
physically manipulating a replica or an original prototype, a researcher gains a phenomenological understanding of the machine’s weight, heat, noise, and interface, leading to insights that a 2D drawing cannot provide.</p>
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<div><font size="3">2. Modern scholarship — with its user-centered historiography — often emphasizes how technology is "socially constructed.” (I know this might be viewed as a bit dated but it still has many proponents!) Prototypes often show evidence of
early user testing. Wear patterns, modified buttons, or ergonomic adjustments on a prototype tell a story of how early users influenced a technology’s trajectory before it ever reached a factory line.</font></div>
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<div>3. … and, finally, s<span style="font-size: medium;">tandard histories often suffer from </span><span data-path-to-node="4" data-index-in-node="37">hindsight bias</span><font size="3">, looking only at successful end products. Prototypes provide a material
trail of the path not taken. By examining a series of failed or intermediate prototypes, historians can reconstruct the developer's logic, seeing exactly where a specific technical theory failed and how the design was "negotiated" with the laws of physics.</font></div>
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<div>Enjoy Hansen’s great blog!</div>
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<div>Dag</div>
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Dag Spicer<br>
Senior Curator<br>
Computer History Museum<br>
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing<br>
ACM History Committee<br>
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.<br>
Mountain View CA 94043</div>
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“History is a vast early warning system.” </div>
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— Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990).</div>
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