The popular Apple C - Apple V or the Windows version Ctrl C - Ctrl V is orphaned. Its inventor has left us. Because yes, these text and image manipulation commands do have an inventor. Larry Tesler died at the age of 74 on Monday, February 17, announced Xerox in a tweet.
"The inventor of cut-and-paste, search and replace, and more, was a former Xerox researcher, Larry Tesler. His groundbreaking ideas will make your workday easier. Larry passed away on Monday, so please join us in celebrating his memory", says the manufacturer on Twitter.
Larry Tesler was born in 1945 in New York City. He joined the Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto (PARC) in 1973 as a researcher on graphical user interfaces, object-oriented programming, document formatting and mobile computing. There he developed copy-paste, cut (Apple X or Ctrl X) and search and replace commands.
The copy and paste command became popular thanks to Apple, which had installed it on Lisa's computer in 1983 and on the Macintosh the following year. Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs, had poached Larry Tesler.
In 1980, he joined Apple where he led product development and user experience research. He worked on the Lisa, Macintosh, Newton and other products. He stayed there for 17 years. Copy and paste was popularized on the Lisa (1983) and Macintosh (1984) operating systems.
He then worked for many other IT and web companies: Amazon and Yahoo!.
On his LinkedIn page, he defined himself as a computer scientist specializing in user experience and innovation management.
