The Inventor of Cut-Copy-Paste Dies. Who Was He?
One minute read. Written by Nayantara Singh – a grade 5 student.
His name was Laurence Tesler and he was a famous computer scientist. Among all his inventions, his creation of the ‘cut-copy-and-paste’ computer command is the most well-known.
One minute read. Written by Nayantara Singh – a grade 5 student.
His name was Laurence Tesler and he was a famous computer scientist. Among all his inventions, his creation of the ‘cut-copy-and-paste’ computer command is the most well-known.
When Lawrence thought of this idea, he was working at the at Xerox Corporation Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC).In 1974, Lawrence and a few colleagues started working on this command.
This command was popularized a lot by the company Apple (that makes iPhones today, but back then made computers). Two of Apple’s computers, called Lisa and Macintosh, started to use this command. Apple used this command as a new feature in keyboards, with X, C and V for cut, copy and paste – and that’s what made it famous.
Who was Laurence Tesler?
So, let me tell you a little about Laurence Tesler’s life – he was really bright and you should know about him.
He was born on April 24, 1945 to Isidore and Muriel. He spent his childhood in Bronx (which is in New York, America) and graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1961. A bright student, Lawrence taught himself programming before college.
He then went to Stanford University where he studied computer science, and graduated in 1965 with a degree in Mathematics (Stanford is one of the world’s best universities). You will be surprised to know, that Lawrence was just sixteen years old when he went to Stanford. During college, he did a few programming jobs on the side. He also worked at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) in the late 1960’s.
In 1973, Lawrence joined Xerox Corporation Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where he eventually invented the cut, copy and paste command. Afterwards, Lawrence worked for a few companies in Silicon Valley, including apple, under Steve Jobs!
Unfortunately, Lawrence Tesler passed away on February 16th, 2020, at the age of 74. He died on Sunday at his home in Portola Valley, Calif. We do not know the cause, but his wife said he has been suffering from effects of a bicycle accident that happened earlier.
So, the next time you use this command, think of the person who invented it and made our life easier!
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