A Brief History of Hci

A Brief History of
Human Computer Interaction Technology
Brad A. Myers
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Technical Report CMU-CS-96-163 and Human Computer Interaction Institute Technical Report CMU-HCII-96-103
December, 1996
Please cite this work as:
Brad A. Myers. "A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology." ACM interactions. Vol. 5, no. 2, March, 1998. pp. 44-54.
Human Computer Interaction Institute
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 [e-mail] Abstract
This article summarizes the historical development of major advances in human-computer interaction technology, emphasizing the pivotal role of university research in the advancement of the field.
Copyright (c) 1996 -- Carnegie Mellon University
A short excerpt from this article appeared as part of "Strategic Directions in Human Computer Interaction," edited by Brad Myers, Jim Hollan, Isabel Cruz, ACM Computing Surveys, 28(4), December 1996
This research was partially sponsored by NCCOSC under Contract No. N66001-94-C-6037, Arpa Order No. B326 and partially by NSF under grant number IRI-9319969. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of NCCOSC or the U.S. Government.
Keywords: Human Computer Interaction, History, User Interfaces, Interaction Techniques.
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1. Introduction

Research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been spectacularly successful, and has fundamentally changed computing. Just one example is the ubiquitous graphical interface used by Microsoft Windows 95, which is based on the Macintosh, which is based on work at Xerox PARC, which in turn is based on early research at the Stanford Research Laboratory (now SRI) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another example is that virtually all software written today employs user interface

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