Xerox Star Historical Documents (courtesy Dave Curbow)

The Xerox 8010 (aka "Star") was introduced in 1981. It changed the way office workers used computers by presenting a desktop interface, and a mouse -- now standard on most office computers. I have collected several of the marketing brochures distributed at the time of Star's introduction, 1982. I've also been collecting papers and photos about the Star.

If you'd like to know more about the Star, you might like to watch a video we made in 1998. The occasion was "The final live demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer, 1981" held at Xerox PARC n June 17, 1998. This presentation was very popular -- we had 800+ people in the audience, and were forced to turn away more than 100 people because we were out of space. A few photos from that event as well as lots of links to other pages can be seen at a site by another ex-Xerox colleague, Bruce Damer. For a copy of the video contact the PARC PR person. Also see More Links (below)

The documents below are sales brochures produced in 1982.

General Introduction	8010 Speaks Your Language	The Xerox 8010 Speaks Your Language	Plug Your Office Into The Future	Xerox 8000 Network Systems: Print Server

In 1985 Xerox introduced new versions of the hardware and software. Here are some brochures from that period.

Xerox 8000 Network Systems: Sharing Information and Resources	Xerox 6085 Professional Computer System

Xerox also produced other lower-tech products that were cutting edge in their own manner. For example, the Xerox 860 Word Processor was similiar to the Wang systems of the time, but with a WYSIWYG word processor on a 1 page bitmap display.

Xerox 860 Information Processing System and Memorywriter

Other Documents

I have begun collecting historical papers on the development of Xerox software products related to the Star. Some of these papers are no longer available, or are very difficult to obtain.

• The Xerox "Star": A Retrospective by Jeff Johnson, et. al.
• "as different as clouds from mud" Reporting the introduction of Star at Japanese Data Show '81 by ASCII journal
• The Mesa Programming Environment by Richard E. Sweet. This paper was written for a 1985 SIGPLAN Symposium on Language Issues in Programming Environments in Seattle. While there are a few language issues mentioned, it is mostly a description and history of the Mesa Progamming Environment (aka Tajo).This PDF file was scanned from the Conference Proceedings, but is quite readable.
• A listing of the FileTypes (aka Object types) used within Viewpoint

People have often asked if I have high resolution photos of the Xerox Star. Here are two that were supplied to me by Xerox PARC a number of years ago. You are free to use them for teaching or other non-profit use only. Credit for these photos should be given to Xerox Corporation, and if you'd like to mention this website we'd be pleased.

Commercial usage requires permission from Xerox. Try their Public Relations department (found under Contact Us on the Xerox corporate website.)

These images are in Photoshop format, 300DPI, and may need some color correction depending on your application.

See Also:

See the DigiBarn Museum's pages on the Xerox Star 8010 (Dandelion) and Xerox 6085/Viewpoint

The Digibarn's extensive collection of Xerox computers and other artifacts