In the summer of 1968, Alan Kay He was a doctoral student at the University of Utah. He was 28 years old and was drawing computers on sheets of paper. They weren't real prototypes yet: more like sketches. They depicted thin rectangles with flat screens, integrated keyboards, and a stylus. Stuff straight out of the future. He called that vision KiddiComp, and then later Dynabook.
What was it? A dynamic notebook. A portable computer for children that could replace books, notebooks, and chalkboards. It weighed less than 2 kg (on paper), cost $500 (on paper), and had a touchscreen (which didn't exist). The problem? In 1968 Computers took up entire rooms, weighed tons, and cost millions. In this context, however, Kay was essentially designing an iPad 42 years ahead of its time.
But to understand better we need to take a step back.
Wesley Clark's LINC: When a Computer Became Personal
To understand the Dynabook, we need to go back to 1962, to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. There Wesley Clark, a physicist with a reputation for being the only person in the world to have been fired three times from MIT for insubordination, built the LINC. Laboratory INstrument Computer. It was as big as two televisions placed side by side, weighed as much as a wardrobe, but it was equipped with things that no other computer had had until then: a keyboard, a screen and an interface. Interactive. You no longer had to hand over packs of punch cards to an operator who disappeared behind sealed doors. You could have used it yourself, directly, in real time.
The LINC cost $43.000, enough to buy a house in the suburbs, but for a scientific laboratory, it was a bargain. It was like buying a Ferrari when everyone has horse-drawn carriages. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) He built 50 units. Clark wanted it to be “just another laboratory instrument,” but he was actually inventing the concept of personal computerA computer for one person. Not for a department, not for a company. For you.
In 1968, when Alan Kay began designing the KiddiComp, he remembered the LINC. Kay himself declared: “I decided to rewatch Wes Clark’s LINC and appreciated it much more.” LINC demonstrated that a computer could sit on a desktop, respond in real time, and not require a specialized operator.
Kay wondered: why stop there? Why not make it weigh as much as a notebook?
KiddiComp: a tablet in 1968
The first drawings of the Dynabook (then called KiddiComp) date back to January 1968. Kay was still a PhD student, working on programming languages and had just seen the system Sketchpad by Ivan SutherlandThe specifications were clear. Too clear for 1968: an 8,5x11-inch flat screen, half an inch thick, a graphical user interface, a built-in keyboard, a stylus for writing on the screen, wireless connectivity, and a visual operating system. It had to cost $500 or less and weigh less than four pounds. It had to be usable by a six-year-old.
In the 60s, while Kay was designing his impossible tablet, pop culture was imagining different futures. Star Trek (1966) showed pocket communicators and voice computers. 2001: Odissea nello spazio (1968) had flat screens and artificial intelligence. But no one, not even Kubrick, had imagined a laptop computer. educationalKay wasn't thinking about futuristic gadgets. He was thinking about children learning math by drawing on screens. About interactive physics simulations. About visual programming languages that would allow anyone to create software.
In 1972, Kay published the final paper: “A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages”. The name had now changed to Dynabook"Dyna" for dynamic, "book" because it replaced books. The document included detailed usage scenarios: children programming collaborative games wirelessly, students downloading ebooks from "digital vending machines," adults using the Dynabook to write, draw, and compose music.
Xerox PARC and the “Interim Dynabook”
In 1970, Kay joined Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). Xerox had just founded this laboratory with a simple mandate: inventing the office of the future. Kay brought with him the concept of the DynabookBut Xerox wasn't interested in children's computers. Xerox sold photocopiers. Executives refused to finance the project. It was too futuristic, too expensive. Too far from the core business.
Kay did what he always did when he was told no: he ignored the order. Together with Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson, he secretly began building a machine he called the “Interim Dynabook.” The interim Dynabook. It wouldn't be portable. It wouldn't cost $500. But it would have a graphical interface, a mouse, overlapping windows, and the Smalltalk programming environment. Thus, in 1973, the Xerox Alto.
The Alto was as big as an office refrigerator and cost as much as a Mercedes. But it worked. 72 DPI bitmap display, three-button mouse, Ethernet for connecting multiple machines over a network, laser printer. When Kay completed it, he released the operating system with an image from Sesame Street: Cookie Monster holding the letter C. A tribute to the children for whom he had imagined the Dynabook. Xerox built about 2.000 units, all for internal use. Never commercially available.
Context note:
A Xerox executive told Bob taylor, lab manager: “The computer will never be as important to society as the photocopier.” He was really sure of it.
In 2019Xerox was worth $6,5 billion. Microsoft was worth $1.010 trillion. Apple $874 billion. The “unimportant computer” generated more value than all the photocopiers in history.
Steve Jobs, December 1979: The Visit That Changed Everything
In December 1979Steve Jobs was 24, and Apple was on the verge of going public. Xerox wanted a piece of the pie and proposed a trade: buying 100.000 Apple shares in exchange for a visit to PARC. Jobs accepted. Larry Tesler, a PARC researcher, led the demo. He showed off the Xerox Alto: windows, icons, a mouse, email, and a WYSIWYG word processor. Jobs began pacing the room. “Why aren’t you doing anything about this stuff?” he kept repeating. “You're sitting on a gold mine”.
Tesler remembers Jobs with his fist under his chin, excited like a child. Bill atkinson, an Apple engineer who accompanied Jobs, had his nose practically glued to the screen. He wanted to understand how everything worked. After an hour of demos, Tesler told a colleague: “After an hour, they understood our technology better than any Xerox executive had understood it in years.”
Jobs returned to Apple and ordered: “You have to make a mouse”. Dean Hovey, an industrial designer, didn't even know what a mouse was. Jobs explained: "The Xerox mouse costs $300 and breaks after two weeks. I want a mouse that costs $15, lasts two years, and works on jeans." This is innovation. Not copying. Understanding the idea and making it better, cheaper, for everyone.
Lisa, Macintosh and the Dynabook legacy
In January 1983, Apple launched the Lisa. It had a graphical interface, a mouse, and a desktop metaphor. It cost $9.995. It was a commercial flop. Too expensive, too slow, too soon. But it proved that PARC's ideas could become products. In January 1984, the Macintosh arrived. Same concept, affordable price: $2.495. The Mac changed the world. Microsoft saw the Mac and created Windows. The rest is history.
But the DynabookIt remained unrealized. Too thin, too light, too cheap. The technology wasn't there. LCD flat panels were still lab prototypes. Lithium batteries didn't exist. ARM processors didn't exist. Kay waited. Meanwhile, he worked on Smalltalk, an object-oriented programming language that would influence Java, Python, and all modern software.
In 1981 The Osborne 1 arrived: the first commercial laptop. It weighed 11 kg. In 1991, the Apple Newton: the first PDA with a touchscreen. Too big. In 2001Microsoft introduced the Tablet PC. Kay said: “It's the first Dynabook-like computer that's good enough to be criticized.”. In 2010, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. It had a 9,7-inch screen, was 1,3 cm thick, and weighed 680 grams. Kay watched the presentation and thought: We're close. But it's not a Dynabook yet.
Why Kay says the Dynabook doesn't exist yet
The hardware is there. The flat screen is there. The touchscreen is there. The wireless is there. The all-day battery life is there. But for Kay, the Dynabook It wasn't just hardware. It was an idea: an educational computer that allows anyone to programThe iPad doesn't let you. You can't download software made by other kids. You can't create apps without a Mac and a developer account. Apple controls what you can and can't install.
Kay said it clearly in a 2013 interview: “Ninety-five percent of the Dynabook concept was about services, not physical form. The goal was symmetry between creation and consumption. Read, write, program, publish. The iPad lets you consume. The Dynabook was supposed to let you create.”
Il Dynabook It remains, therefore, an unfinished vision. A bit like those flying cars that the 50s promised for the year 2000. We have drones, air taxis in testing, but no flying DeLorean. We have the iPad, the Surface, Chromebooks. But not the laptop that teaches children to think computationally. Maybe one day someone will actually build the Dynabook. Or maybe Kay was right all along: the future is not predicted, it is inventedBut it takes 40 years of technology to catch up with ideas.
