This article was originally published at Medium.

All of us interact with graphical user interfaces daily, whether designing them or just using our smartphone, computer, or tablet. The metaphors of the desktop and the rubbish bin are the heart of our technological skills. Also, we can't conceive a computer or smartphone running an operating system without these elements.

However, most of us ignore the origins of graphical user interfaces. How did it all start? All those metaphors (desktop, window, trash...) seem pretty obvious now, but how did they appear? This is a brief review of the historical facts that have conditioned the technology that we use now.

1963: Ivan Sutherland creates Sketchpad

Until 1963 the only way people could communicate with computers was through their own input devices: buttons, storage media such as punched cards...

This changed when Ivan Sutherland, a 25-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published his doctoral thesis. He had developed Sketchpad: a basic drawing software controlled with a stylus. This program was not only a revolution in human-computer interaction but also a pioneer in computer-aided design and object-oriented programming.

I highly recommend watching the next video. It is surprising to see that everyday technology like drawing on a screen using a pencil was developed so long ago.

Sutherland was also one of the frontrunners of augmented reality (AR). In 1968 he participated in the creation of the first AR helmet, called "The Sword of Damocles".

1973: The contribution of the Xerox PARC

Although Sketchpad had already made a big difference in the way people used a computer, it was still far from our current standards.

The people at Xerox PARC, the research center of the Xerox company located in Palo Alto (California), created one of the first personal computers in 1973: the Xerox Alto. Despite not being the first personal computer, it was the first to introduce two innovations that have been with us ever since: the desktop and the mouse metaphors.

In the desktop metaphor, files were displayed as sheets of paper and directories as folders. The workspace was the desktop, where users could place files and directories along with the mailbox, the clock, the calendar, or the calculator.

Six years after, in 1979, Steve Jobs visited the Xerox PARC to attend a demonstration of the technology developed there. After attending the center along with some Apple engineers, Xerox's interface concepts would have a major impact on the products subsequently created by Apple.

1984: The Macintosh

In 1984 Apple released the Macintosh, the first personal computer with a graphical multi-pane window interface. The Macintosh interface was based on the ideas of the products developed at the Xerox PARC. Apple even hired Xerox employees for the development of its operating system.

The Macintosh interface looked very similar to the ones we use now. In addition to the interface with windows, the desktop, and the files and folders, we can also see the trash. This feature was first included in the Apple Lisa with the name of "Wastebasket", but it was renamed "Trash" on the Macintosh.

Susan Kare designed the iconography of the Macintosh operating system, becoming a pioneer in the design of user interfaces. Later she also contributed to the design of other operating systems like Windows or Linux.

In 1985, copying the Macintosh interface, Microsoft released a graphical interface for its MS-DOS system. It was called Windows 1.0. Windows and its successive improved versions became very popular due to their low prices, bringing their concepts closer to the whole world.

In conclusion

Graphical user interfaces have undergone a great evolution since their origins, and their basic foundations are deeply rooted. This fact is especially remarkable in desktop systems, where there are very few variations between one operating system and another, and we don't accept changes in concepts already established.

That provokes situations in which millennials (like me) identify the floppy disk icon with the action of saving and not with the floppy disk itself since we have never seen those devices.

Will there be a technological innovation that makes us abandon the roots of graphical user interfaces as we know them? It seems safe to assume that it won't happen. Users have already learned the metaphors on which interfaces are based and changing them would create a collective confusion. But only time will tell.