KEJ Alan

KEJ (Cay), Alan, an American electronics engineer. Developed principles of creating a personal computer.

After serving in the army entered the University of Colorado, then in 1966, graduate of the University Outstanding. Utah, where he worked under the guidance of a pioneer of computer graphics by David Evans. For his dissertation, Kay began to develop software for the computer Flex, developed in the laboratory. Although Flex has not been put into mass production, he essentially was a prototype PC.

In 1969, Kay defended his doctoral dissertation, which developed the principles of creating a personal computer. This computer was supposed to be both powerful and easy to manage. After defending his dissertation Kay joined the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University, . In 1971 he joined the Xerox Research Center of the company in Palo Alto (PARC - Palo Alto Research Center), . where he continued theoretical development of a prototype personal computer, . he named Dynabook,
. This computer does not exceed the size of the notebook had to have the capacity to handle text and graphical information, as well as serve as a means of communication with remote databases. In addition, this computer was supposed to be affordable and accessible to a wide range of buyers.

One of the basic principles of management of the new computer was supposed to be no input commands from the keyboard, and the choice of using the "mouse" from the menu.

In 1971, there were microprocessors, and Kay was able to project partially realized in the computer Alto, presented by Xerox in 1973. For Alto Kay has developed a visually oriented programming language Smalltalk, in which laid the foundations of the principle of graphic organizing programs and files, allowing simultaneous display several programs in the form of "windows". While the Alto was not put into mass production, it is considered the first personal computer, appeared two years earlier Altair. Subsequently, on the principles of Alto was created by Apple Computer Lisa.