Wednesday, February 7, 2001

Stanford Web Site Documents the History of the Macintosh Computer By JESSICA LUDWIG When Steve Jobs asked him to design a prototype mouse for the Macintosh computer, Dean Hovey went to a local Walgreens and bought a few butter dishes and all the roll-on deodorant he could find. He used a ball from one of the deodorants and a butter dish to fabricate a model for the mouse. An interview with Mr. Hovey is part of a Web site at Stanford University that relates the story of the Mac. Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley includes papers donated to the university in 1997 from Apple's corporate library. Alex S. Pang, a Webmaster at Stanford's Library, is the producer and principal author of the site. He organized the documents into six categories: counterculture, the early Mac, the mouse, technical writing, marketing, and user groups. Each section contains a brief introduction and suggested paths through the materials, which include links to primary and secondary sources. For example, the section on the design of the mouse begins with its invention in the 1960's by Douglas Engelbart, then director of the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute. Visitors also learn about Mr. Hovey's later experiments with parts taken from household products as he worked to create the body of the mouse. Extensive sketches and photos of prototypes, memorandums, and transcripts of interviews with designers are among the linked resources. Stuart W. Leslie, a professor of history and technology at the Johns Hopkins University, says users should think of the site as an archive offering an overview of the materials housed at Stanford. In itself, the site is not an exhibit, virtual museum, or e-book. "It's really one of the first attempts at a digital archive that you can play around with," he says. One interactive feature of the site is a link to Apple's 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh. In the commercial, which spoofs George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, brainwashed masses of people sit in a lecture hall receiving authoritarian doctrine from their leader, whose face appears on a projection screen. A lone runner wielding a sledgehammer enters the lecture hall and destroys the screen. The marketing section also includes copies of print advertisements for the computer and interviews with journalists who covered technology at the time. The interviews for the Web site, conducted in 2000 by Mr. Pang and Wendy Marinaccio, a Stanford graduate, are not part of Apple's donation. Many of the people interviewed, like technical writers and mouse designers, had not previously had the opportunity to publicly discuss their experiences. Mr. Pang says most of the people he spoke with volunteered not only their personal stories but also notes and sketches that they had saved in filing cabinets or garages. The site ties the emergence of Apple's personal computer to the counterculture of the 1960's. The main resource for this cultural argument is Theodore Roszak's From Satori to Silicon Valley: San Francisco and the American Counterculture (Lexikos Publishing Company, 1984), which traces the connection between computing and anti-authoritarianism. The site links to an electronic version of the book, which includes two bonus chapters--"Nerds, Zombies, and the Flight From Maturity" and "Down Among the Cyberpunks"--that the author wrote for the Stanford Web site last year. Since the site went online in July, Mr. Pang has received 400 e-mail messages about the project. Some point out typographical errors, others ask for homework help, and some ask for advice in buying Apple products. Mr. Pang himself thinks of the site as being useful for historians of both technology and business. A real strength of the resource, he says, is that it shows the behind-the-scenes industrial design and the divisions of labor that were involved in building the computer. Apple's longevity (the Macintosh project was proposed in 1979) makes it an integral component of Silicon Valley history and culture. "Apple developed a number of advertising and marketing strategies that have become sort of the Silicon Valley playbook," says Mr. Pang. Apple still manages to maintain the "scruffy genius" quality that served as an archetype for later technology start-ups, he adds. Another goal of the archive is to preserve the history of Silicon Valley by taking a historical look at user groups and the evolution of technical writing. "Businesses come and go or may be around for only 10 years," says Mr. Pang. "It's a local culture that eats its old and is not particularly interested in the past." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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