Its most arresting element was its human scale. Where the typical computer of this era was the size of two or three refrigerators standing back to back and wired to many more racks of special-purpose hardware, the “Alto” was to be self-contained and small enough to bark a shin on as you wheeled it under your desk. The Alto was interactive, which meant instantly responsive to the user’s demands. Contemporary computers communicated with their users indirectly, through punch cards or teletypes so slow and awkward that a single bleak exchange of query and response required days to complete.
