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Man Who Invented Cut, Copy And Paste On Computers Dies, Aged 74

Man Who Invented Cut, Copy And Paste On Computers Dies, Aged 74

Where would we be without computer scientist Larry Tesler?

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Computer scientist Larry Tesler, the man famed for inventing the Cut, Copy and Paste function on computers, has sadly died.

The former Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo! employee was 74.

While Tesler might not have been as famous as other revolutionaries in the technology industry, his creation has no doubt helped millions of people around the world.

Honestly, where would we be if we couldn't cut, copy and paste text, images, videos and everything else? Students trying to finish their assessments would be stuffed. Analysts copying data from one spreadsheet to another would have their workloads explode. Trying to make a fire meme would take so much longer.

PA

And we all have Larry to thank.

Born in America, Mr Tesler went to Stanford University to study computer science, before joining Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973. It was here that he created the classic Crtl+C, Crtl+V (although it was probably way too early to be doing keyboard shortcuts).

According to Gizmodo, Larry, along with Tim Mott, helped develop a 'mouse-driven graphical user interface' called Gypsy, which was the first version of the computer layout that we know today.

Gypsy is described as a 'click and type interface in which the user could, at any time, enter text at the current insertion point, or click where the insertion point should be repositioned'. Sounds basic, but you have to remember this was decades ago.

After coming up with that groundbreaking technology, he went to Apple from 1980 until 1997, where he worked in various roles, including Vice President of AppleNet and Apple's Chief Scientist.

Yahoo! (Creative Commons)

He then co-founded a company called Stagecast Software, which helped kids learn programming concepts, before joining Amazon in 2001. He eventually became Vice President of Shopping Experience and then jumped to Yahoo!, where he was in charge of the user experience and design group.

His final years were spent doing consulting work.

Mr Tesler was also responsible for developing the software which allows a user to start using the keyboard when opening an application. Before that, there were programs that could be opened, yet the keys might be typed on something else working in the background.

We take all this stuff for granted these days and just expect everything to work how it should. But there were geniuses like Larry Tesler who knew that we would need these things before we ever knew what a personal computer was.

So we salute you Larry Tesler.

Featured Image Credit: Yahoo! Blog (Creative Commons)

Topics: News