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Scientist who ‘invented’ ‘cut, copy and paste’ is dead

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Larry Tesler



Larry Tesler, an icon of early computing, has died on Monday at the age of 74, his former employer Xerox confirmed.

Tesler, a pioneer in the field with multiple patents to his name, coined the word “browser” with his SmallTalk Browser product in 1976, according to his website. But his most famous innovation was the creation of the cut/copy and paste function, which he developed after joining the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973.

The innovation was reportedly based on the old method of editing in which people would physically cut portions of printed text and glue them elsewhere.

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The command was incorporated in Apple’s software on the Lisa computer in 1983, and the original Macintosh that was released the following year.

Tesler started working in Silicon Valley in the early 1960s, at a time when computers were inaccessible to the vast majority of people.

It was thanks to his innovations – which included the “cut”, “copy” and “paste” commands – that the personal computer became simple to learn and use.

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Xerox, where Tesler spent part of his career, paid tribute to him.

“The inventor of cut/copy & paste, find & replace, and more, was former Xerox researcher Larry Tesler,” the company tweeted. “Your workday is easier thanks to his revolutionary ideas.”

Tesler was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1945, and studied at Stanford University in California.

After graduating, he specialised in user interface design – that is, making computer systems more user-friendly.

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He worked for a number of major tech firms during his long career. He started at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Parc), before Steve Jobs poached him for Apple, where he spent 17 years and rose to chief scientist.

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After leaving Apple he set up an education start-up, and worked for brief periods at Amazon and Yahoo.

 

BBC

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