Kay’s thesis outlined an interactive computer called the FLEX machine which he had designed in partnership with an unsung hardware genius named Ed Cheadle, who was an important engineer for a Salt Lake aerospace company. The FLEX incorporated many of the ideas Kay would develop in the coming years at PARC, including compactness, object-oriented programming, and the use of a display screen. But it was not quite the personal computer he envisioned, in part because it was not powerful enough to perform all the functions required by his ideal and in part because it utilized a complicated and
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