All hail the GUI
Tags: webdev, webdesign, computerscience
Published: 2023-11-16 20:30:13


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/72a0gygiopgnm3o79hu6.jpeg)

How to Open a folder using the Command Line:

```
C:\users>
C:\users> cd My Computer/Desktop/Fun
C:\users\My Computer\Desktop\Fun>
```

Anybody who uses a computer today will be more than familiar with the GUI [(Graphical User Interface)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface): the graphic display of folders, icons, etc. which also utilitises a mouse pointer. It’s quite interesting to know that early computer’s didn’t come with them; you needed to have a PhD in Software Engineering before you could open a folder :-)

At the time (late 1960s), computers were more of tools for businesses and large corporations like [IBM ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM)and [Xerox ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox)who could afford both an operator(computer scientist) and a computer. They were not household appliances. The concept of a Personal Computer or a portable intelligent machine hadn’t yet been properly conceived.

Due to the difficulty of learning and exploring the Operating System (kernel) through the Command Line Interface (CLI), computers weren’t a household paraphernalia…

Until companies like Apple and Microsoft almost literally bought their way in.

In the late 90’s as the years passed, Xerox (a company that sold mostly printers and copiers) tried to avoid the inevitable future where people read on computer screens rather than printing and photocopying on paper, thus they gathered some of the best engineers from Stanford Research Institute [SRI ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International)and created the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) in 1970.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9eri8lbbckkuaiywstvm.jpeg)

All modern personal computers that make use of the [W.I.M.P](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)) (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers) system can give thanks to the [“Mother of all Demos”](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos), held in San Francisco on the 9th of December, 1968 by Douglas Engelbert, where he displayed the future of User Interaction and other then new concepts such as the use of a mouse to navigate the [shell ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing))(User Interface). That said, Bill English deserves credit for the invention of the mouse.

Xerox PARC had spent so much time and money into the research of getting their lucrative business of “printers and photocopiers” to last another golden decade, this singular act inevitably drove us the consumers closer to screens than paper.

As you would imagine the Xerox PARC bosses were not happy at all with the results obtained from the research, they decided to discontinue that department, and in a last attempt to gain profit and relevance, the intelligent researchers at PARC started charging a fee to teach these new technologies to organisations, businesses, startups and basically anyone who was willing to pay.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8f2zv8qvb85ao05zlrlg.jpeg)

Among the slew of pupils was a young Steve Jobs alongside some of the founding members of Adobe. Steve Jobs said he was so mind blown by the GUI that he didn’t even see the other technologies, in his word’s “within a minute of seeing this I already knew, this is the way technology is headed”.

Young William Gates, also attended the lecture upon praise by Steve and also came back brimming with ideas.

Steve (Apple) and Bill (Windows) signed a contract which stated Windows couldn’t launch their version of the GUI until the launch of Apple’s GUI in 1983.

Production dates were eventually pushed back and in November 1983, Bill Gates made a public statement at COMDEX. When Steve confronted Gates and accused him of theft, Gates made a rather famous statement:


“I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”


_It was from the well of Xerox that Apple and Microsoft both drank of which gave them most of their revolutionary ideas breakthroughs._

Although Jobs and Gates had already made advances in their respective projects, the little big idea they “borrowed” from wealthy Xerox took their ideas a long way and made them a very lucrative industry that has stood the test of time.

Is there a lesson to gain from the story……? It is this. **You don’t have to invent something to be the best at it.**

If you have a different lesson, please share your thoughts.