Computer History Notes - Herong's Tutorial Notes - v3.13, by Herong Yang
Apple Writer - The Most Popular Word Processor
This section describes Apple Writer, the most popular word processor on Apple II computers, developed by Paul Lutus and released in 1979.
Apple Writer was the most popular word processor for Apple II computers. Apple Writer was created by programmer and former NASA engineer Paul Lutus and published in 1979 by Apple Computer.
The original version of Apple Writer, version 1.0 in 1979, worked on Apple II computers with 40 columns of text display and uppercase-only keyboard. Here is how the "Apple II History" site describes how Apple Writer deals with these limitations:
"To achieve entry of upper and lowercase characters, Apple Writer used inverse text to display uppercase, and normal text to display lowercase. When entering text, an uppercase letter was entered by pressing the ESC key once. This changed the usual cursor box to an inverse caret (^), and the next letter entered would be uppercase (displayed in inverse). If the ESC key were pressed twice in a row, the cursor changed into an inverse plus sign (+), and was now an editing cursor that could be moved through the text."
The picture below shows a screenshot of Apple Writer (Source: http://apple2history.org/):
Table of Contents
2002 - .NET Framework Developed by Microsoft
1995 - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor Created by Rasmus Lerdorf
1995 - Java Language Developed by Sun Microsystems
1991 - WWW (World Wide Web) Developed by Tim Berners-Lee
1991 - Gopher Protocol Created by a University of Minnesota Team
1984 - X Window System Developed a MIT Team
1984 - Macintosh Developed by Apple Inc.
1983 - "Sendmail" Mail Transfer Agent Developed by Eric Allman
1979 - The Tcsh (TENEX C Shell) Developed by Ken Greer
1978 - Bash (Bourne-Again Shell) Developed by Brian Fox
1978 - The C Shell Developed by Bill Joy
1977 - The Bourne Shell Developed by Stephen Bourne
►1977 - Apple II Designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Apple II - The First Personal Computer
VisiCalc - The First Spreadsheet Application
►Apple Writer - The Most Popular Word Processor
1976 - vi Text Editor Developed by Bill Joy
1974 - Internet by Vinton Cerf
1972 - C Language Developed by Dennis Ritchie
1971 - FTP Protocol Created by Abhay Bhushan
1970 - UNIX Operating System Developed by AT&T Bell Labs