RIP Larry Tesler: The Man That Invented Cut, Copy, And Paste On The Computer

www.barstoolsports.com ^ | 2/20/2020 2:19 PM | Clem

[Captain Rhino]

LOL!!!

This is a sentiment I heartily agree with many times a day (especially the part about auto fill/correct/spell).

Mr. Tesler (autocorrected to Feeler on first input):

Despite my moderate to severe carpal tunnel syndrome (brought on by years and years of typing reports as a defense analyst), I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your invention of the copy, cut, and paste functions. They helped me to do work that would have taken hours and days in just seconds or minutes and thereby permitted this office drone to have a successful marriage, family life, educate my children, and save enough to retire. I’m sure many others, upon thoughtful reflection, will also realize how much your inventiveness helped them as well.

Well done, sir. Well done.

Rest In Peace, confident in the knowledge that your contributions to the world did improve people’s lives and will continue to do so for many generations to come.

Journey well.

[minnesota_bound]

illustrator Kevan Atteberry invented “Clippy”
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504767/tragic-life-clippy-worlds-most-hated-virtual-assistant

[minnesota_bound]

#6 Microsoft invented ‘Windows” and people have been cursoring ever since... : )

[SgtHooper]

Yup! And from that came the best early computer game — PONG!

[minnesota_bound]

#40 Krita is free and pretty good.
https://krita.org/en/

[Future Snake Eater]

I got my undergrad at NC State University where one of our professors was the guy who invented CTRL-ALT-DEL.

[BTerclinger]

another interesting telling of the Jobs visit to PARC...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth

[goldbux]

* * *

[ldish]

Anyone know the cause of death so young?

[Swordmaker]

another interesting telling of the Jobs visit to PARC...

Thanks BTerclinger, that is a great article that gets the story absolutely correct. Amazing. Most articles on the Steve Jobs/PARC story try to claim that Apple and Jobs stole the tech from Xerox. It correctly points out that Apple paid for the visits and the ideas they got during the visit through the negotiated pre-IPO stock purchase.

Part of what was not told in the article about the two Apple PARC interaction is that there were two visits, one with just Steve for eight hours, and then the second where Steve brought back his team of about twelve software and hardware engineers a week later for another eight hours. At neither meeting were any of Apple’s people allowed to take notes, photos, or copy any code. The only things they could leave with were ideas and their memories and impressions of what they saw and were told by the PARC scientists and engineers. Another thing not mentioned in most narratives of the PARC visit was that the PARC people also got some ideas from the Apple people in exchange.

I heartily recommend that article to everyone not just for the PARC/Apple visit story but for the general history in it as well. Fascinating.

[Swordmaker]

I'm pretty sure people have been cursing since Biblical times.

Nah, it’s since Peanuts. . .

Cursor you Red Baron!

[Swordmaker]

I'm amazed that I have no clue the difference between cut and copy, I guess someday I'll look it up.

Cut removes what you are copying from it’s current location so you can pasted it elsewhere, while copy leaves it there while you duplicate it elsewhere,

[1Old Pro]

Thanks, I guess I don’t typical “cut” so I have always used copy.

[roadcat]

The ^ (upwards “V”) was every editor’s handwritten mark to “insert text here” on a piece of paper.
“X” removes the “lined out text”

Yes. I remember that from typing classes in high school in the 1960s. Typewriters were everywhere, along with carbon sheets so you could have copies of your correspondence. Proofreader/editors made notations on the paper, so you could insert a fresh sheet of paper and start all over. Filled many a trashcan typing papers over and over. I still keep a manual typewriter (circa 1946) although never using it once computer printers came along (preferred it to dot matrix printers). My wife was a typist, and worked her way up to being an I.T. manager of a data site. Young people no longer remember rows of data entry clerks pounding away on manual typewriters, but we do.

[daniel1212]

most Linux distributions actually have 2 clipboards. If you’re using your mouse you can highlight a selection with the left button, then paste with the middle. This is a separate clipboard from the cut/copy/paste one.

Only problem I found with that is that if I have copied something by selecting/highlighting a selection and then want to post that over another word or section, then selecting/highlighting the 2nd section results in copying that, so that if I then choose paste then that, the last thing copied, is pasted.

[daniel1212]

Others, less commonly remembered: Ctrl-Z Undo.

Used often, but if only it worked to undo last action in real life!

In Apache and Libre office word pros, you can created costume keyboard commands (like make F2 do paste unformatted, and Insert to save document).

And with my stiff arthritic finders (more like search and destroy vs. hunt and peck) then to save time and mistakes, I use AutoHotKey to remap CapsLock to ctrl+c (copy) and Esc to ctrl+v (paste) and then NumLock to Esc . And the middle mouse button to cut.

CapsLock::^c

Esc::^v

NumLock::Esc

mbutton::^x)

Thank God for His grace thru others.

[daniel1212]

I'm amazed at the number of people today that don't know that you can use your keyboard to cut/copy/paste.

And to select a whole page via Ctrl+a, or just a section in it by placing the cursor where you want to start the copy, then holding down the shift key and then placing the cursor where you want the copy to end.

Then you have the many keyboard shortcutsin Windows , and the any you can make, plus those AutoHotKey enables. Thank God for help!