Photos: The birth of the Lisa and Mac interface

by ZDNet Author | July 19, 2006 11:35am PDT | Image 1 of 53

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Bill Atkinson was Apple Computer's main developer of the user interface that first appeared on the Lisa and later on the Mac. A passionate photographer, Atkinson had the foresight in the late '70s and early '80s to document his UI work for Apple in a series of Polaroids.

The photos were published by another Mac pioneer, Andy Hertzfeld, in his book, "Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made." Through Hertzfeld, Atkinson gave CNET News.com permission to republish them here.

The first picture in Atkinson's notebook is from the Apple II Pascal project. The high-performance graphics routines he wrote for Apple II Pascal in the fall of 1978 led into his initial work on the Lisa.

Skip to sections:
2. Radical shift
3. Lisa desktop
4. Sketching out the Mac

Captions adapted from Andy Hertzfeld's book "Revolution in the Valley."

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