BLIT: an early Windowed Graphic Interface from Bell Labs - AT&T Archives

AT&T Tech Channel
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An AT&T Archives film on the Blit, an early windowed graphics terminal from Bell Labs from around 1982. It shows the multiple-window programmable bitmap display working with Unix.

HN people post it as a record of an early windowed graphical interface from outside Xerox, and as the example of AT&T failing to see that everyone would get a bitmap display.

GUI historyHCI research
#blit#belllabs#windowing#unix#bitmapdisplay#1982

8 comments from Hacker News

p
@perlpimp2018 · in “Why linux desktop didn't make it, because origins matter”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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@tambourine_man2017 · in “BLIT: An Early Windowed Graphic Interface from Bell Labs – AT&T Archives”
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@majke2016 · in “BLIT: An Early Windowed Graphic Interface from Bell Labs – AT&T Archives (1982)”
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@tambourine_man2016 · in “BLIT: Windowed Graphic Interface from Bell Labs – AT&T Archives”
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@elch2026 · in “The text mode lie: why modern TUIs are a nightmare for accessibility”
Real UNIX terminal: ▶ this video Also terminal: link Terminal: link
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e
@elch2026 · in “The vi family”
That's why it's so complicated, and has left and right parentheses commands. You start out with a clean concept and then sort of accrete guano. It lands on you and sticks and you can't do anything about it really. But of course he was wrong about 1991-2026: The days of non-raster stuff are numbered, though sheer momentum will carry it to the end of the decade. And about AT&T as the same year (1984) they introduced BLIT terminal: The fundamental tension in UNIX that I think AT&T doesn't understand is that everyone is going to have a bitmap. ▶ this video
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r
@rasz2021 · in “Xerox Alto Emulator”
another one was BLIT link) ▶ this video also mentioned in The History of Unix, by Rob Pike link then there was Star
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a
@aap_2017 · in “Alcatel-Lucent releases source for 8th, 9th and 10th editions of Unix”
These are the operating systems the Blit (▶ this video) was used with.
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