Rest in Peace, Lawrence Tesler...

The New York Times reported this week that Lawrence Tesler died at 74. "Who in the world was Lawrence Tesler," you may ask?

In the 1970s, Tesler was a young researcher at Xerox, working on computers.

Computers then were massive "mainframe" devices that used cathode ray tube (CRT) workstations to input data, an improvement over the punch cards which were their predecessors. But still, input had to be in the form of some type of "code" to write programs, and text typed cryptically into "command lines" to run them. One needed to be pretty computer savvy to run and use a simple word processing program in those days, and editing a document produced on one required either memorizing a thousand "alt-esc" or "^" commands, or having a massive template taped to your keyboard. Even when the first "luggable portable" computers came onto the market, with their "green screens" and crude cursors, one still needed to be a "geek" to use "Wordstar" or "Lotus 123."

Tesler thought computers should be easier to use. "Wouldn't it be nice if, when editing text on the screen, what you SEE is what you GET," and moving around through the text wouldn't require holding down one of those little arrow keys for 30 seconds? So, he spearheaded inventing a more user-friendly screen format that came to be known as WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzywig," but obviously standing for What You See Is What You Get). The screen would resemble how the final printed page. And to move around the text? How about a small box with a button on the top, connected to a wire "tail" to the computer? Tail? Let's call it a "mouse," he thought. He and his team went on to invent things we take for granted like "blocking text" and "copy/cut and paste."

Xerox wasn't real interested in these early innovations, but to humor Tesler and his team of young engineers, they invited other Silicon Valley computer pioneers and start-up geeks in for a show and tell of this new "GUI" (pronounced "gooey," but standing for "Graphic User Interface") idea. Xerox offered to allow any of them to use the technology for free, if they wanted it. Being accomplished computer wizards quite used to command lines and dim green screens, most of them shrugged their shoulders and left. One stayed behind and asked a lot of questions Tesler would later say impressed the daylights out of him. His name was Steve Jobs.

Jobs took the GUI idea AND Tesler, offering him a job at his new company, Apple. Together they designed Apple's first graphics interface computer the LISA (named after Jobs' girlfriend), which soon gave way to the Macintosh, which exploded on the scene like the Beatles. There's a lot more to the story, including how Jobs paid another computer geek to design his software for the Macintosh, based on Tesler's and Jobs' ideas. And that young fellow--Bill Gates--and his start-up company, Microsoft, was later sued over its "Windows" program, which Jobs contended was stolen property. But that's for another day.

Today, I pay tribute to Lawerence Tesler. I'm writing this overdue blog post on a 21.5 inch Macintosh with a "Retina" screen that makes my typing look just like a paper-white page. And when I make the beaucoup errors I always make, I just grab my little "mouse," block the text, and fix them, or "cut and paste," as the need arises, all thanks to Tesler and the late Steve Jobs.

Imagine where we would be if no one had listened to Tesler's "out of the box" idea? Or where Xerox would be if they HAD, back then? They, like IBM were "giants" in the technology field, and could have cemented their status for decades to come. Even IBM wasn't immune to closed thinking. Thomas Watson, their CEO in that era, publicly stated that he thought the world would never need more than five computers. I'm told my CAR has about 100 of them managing its functions, today.

So, what's the moral of the story, beyond memorializing Lawrence Tesler? (We preachers ALWAYS have to have some kind of a moral.) Here are a few: new is often good; don't limit your thinking to what is easy and comfortable; believe in evolution--technological and human; as a person of faith, imagine your faith not as an anchor to the past, but as a firm footing for what comes next. The world is growing, changing. The culture is growing, changing. How are we responding to these facts? Cursing the "darkness" of change, or lighting a "candle" of progress and hope?  You decide, Beloved.

[Writer's note: I was tempted to launch into an additional discourse on how the WYSIWYG phenomenon could be illustrative for the United Methodist Church, but I thought better of it, choosing to just leave this here. Still, I keep thinking of the words of Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest: "O brave new world, that has such people in 't!” (copied and pasted, in memory of Mr. Tesler.)]