Artifact Details

Title

MacPaint Interview and Demonstration, with Bill Atkinson and Andy Herzfeld

Catalog Number

102702313

Type

Moving image

Description

The Apple Macintosh combined brilliant design in hardware and in software.The drawing program MacPaint, which was released with the computer in January of 1984, was an example of that brilliance both in what it did, and in how it was implemented. MacPaint was written by Bill Atkinson, who was a member of the original Macintosh development team. He based it on his earlier LisaSketch (also called SketchPad) for the unsuccessful Apple Lisa computer, so he originally called it MacSketch. He started work on the Mac version in early 1983. Atkinson also created Quickdraw first for the Lisa, as LisaGraf. Andy Hertzfeld, another key member of the team, considers QuickDraw "the single most significant component of the original Macintosh technology" in its ability to "push pixels around in the frame buffer at blinding speeds to create the celebrated user interface."

Date

2010-05-06

Participants

Atkinson, Bill, Interviewee
Gardner, Aimee, Interviewer
Gruca, Ken, Videographer
Hertzfeld, Andy, Interviewee
Kossow, Allen, Interviewer
Plutte, Jon, Producer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Format

MOV

Category

Oral history

Subject

Atkinson, Bill; Hertzfeld, Andy; MacPaint; MacDraw (Software); Apple Computer, Inc.--History

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X5818.2010