Who invented the clipboard?

Question

Just as the wheel, the clipboard on a computer is indeed a very useful invention!

Who came up with such bright idea?

Additionally, did it exist on non-graphical environments as well ?

When we talk about a "clipboard" in a GUI, I think of a space provided by the OS to transfer data between applications in an app-agnostic way. OP, what do you think of all these text-editor examples? Is it what you were looking for, or something more like the Windows Clipboard? — Lawnmower Man, May 19 '21 at 19:31
@LawnmowerMan I was thinking more like your first sentence, however, things might not have been as integrated as they are today. — Eric Cartman, May 20 '21 at 00:21
When you say "the clipboard" are you just talking about copying and pasting in general, which normally means copying something new overwrites what was copied before? When I think of "the clipboard" I think of something that can remember multiple things that were copied and that lets you choose which one to paste, which is sort of an advanced copy/paste feature. — Kyle Delaney, May 21 '21 at 18:29

Polygnome · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-19T15:56:59.660

54

According to Richard Dale, copy & paste was invented in '73 - '76 by Larry Tesler for Smalltalk-76:

Copy and paste in a modeless editor was invented by Larry Tesler at XEROX Parc for the Smalltalk-76 programming environment, in 1973-76. In Smalltalk, when you selected some text you had a large number of commands you could apply to the selection; 'again', 'copy', 'cut', 'paste', 'doit', 'compile', 'undo', 'cancel', 'align'. [1]

However, as @StephenKitt pointed out, modeless copy & paste was also present in Gypsy, developed in 1975 (also by Larry Tesler) [2]

Moreover, it seems that early word processors also had this capability, although usually using modes:

The earliest editors (designed for teleprinter terminals) provided keyboard commands to delineate a contiguous region of text, then delete or move it. Since moving a region of text requires first removing it from its initial location and then inserting it into its new location, various schemes had to be invented to allow for this multi-step process to be specified by the user. Often this was done with a "move" command, but some text editors required that the text be first put into some temporary location for later retrieval/placement. [3]

However, this wasn't called the "clipboard" at the time, this came far later:

In 1983, the Apple Lisa became the first text editing system to call that temporary location "the clipboard". [3]

So I'd say copy & paste was such an obvious improvement that it came to text editors a soon as they moved from punch cards to memory, but it took until '83 until the concept of a "clipboard" emerged.

edited May 19 '21 at 15:56

answered May 19 '21 at 08:38

Polygnome

586
4
9

5

Welcome! I was writing this up as you posted this so I’ll discard my answer. Larry Tesler came up with copy-paste earlier than Smalltalk; the first implementation was in his Gypsy word processor. He was inspired by Pentti Kanerva’s handling of delete and insert (or undo). It would be interesting to find out when the first “shared” clipboard was implemented, i.e. one allowing copying and pasting between applications... – Stephen Kitt May 19 '21 at 08:44
Perhaps more accurately, copy-paste was added to Mini Mouse and then Gypsy before being added to Smalltalk, AFAICT. – Stephen Kitt May 19 '21 at 08:50
@StephenKitt That is good to know, unfortunately its quite hard to come up with definite sources, and I'm too young to have experienced that time myself ;) Do you have any reference information about Mini Mouse? Gypsy was somewhat easy to find, but I can come up with hardly any information about Mini Mouse. – Polygnome May 19 '21 at 15:53
2

Designing Interactions mainly, and Larry Tesler’s web site. – Stephen Kitt May 19 '21 at 16:02
@StephenKitt Thanks, those look like treasure troves of information. I'll probably need a while to dig through all that. – Polygnome May 19 '21 at 16:04
I remember reading an early draft of "Inside Macintosh" (something like version 0.8.5 - it was typeset in Courier and had "Insert figure 1-a here" for illustrations). The "Clipboard" was prominent in the discussions of the UI, and it certainly made it sound like it was an Apple innovation. I keep kicking myself for not stealing that binder when I left the company; nobody else ever looked at it – Flydog57 May 21 '21 at 19:07

score 35 · Answer 2 · answered May 19 '21 at 10:56

35

Honorable mention should be given to TECO, a text editor from the early 1960s. It had a set of containers called Q registers that functioned much the way the clipboard does. Cut and paste operations were easy enough in TECO, although the syntax was obscure.

answered May 19 '21 at 10:56

Walter Mitty

6,128
17
36

14

"Obscure" is such a generous word for TECO commands... – TMN May 19 '21 at 16:49
11

If you give the command "obscure" to TECO, depending upon which files you have open, it may find the cure for cancer. – A. I. Breveleri May 19 '21 at 19:19
2

Hey, TECO was generous to me, so... – Walter Mitty May 19 '21 at 19:22
6

I'm not sure what Ob does, but scure will certainly search for a cure! – Walter Mitty May 19 '21 at 20:57
Don't think this really counts as a clipboard, since Q-regs only operated within a single TECO address space. On the other hand, you could make a case for TMPCOR being sort-of a clipboard between apps on TOPS-10. – dave May 20 '21 at 00:21
That's right this isn't a real clipboard. Hence, honorable mention. However, in the early 1960s, TECO and DDT, taken together, amounted to an interactive development environment, or at least the prototype. – Walter Mitty May 21 '21 at 10:50

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '21 at 07:05

15

It was certainly around in vi (Unix text editor) that I first used in 1985. Vi is a visual front end to ed, which presumably pre-dates it. The cryptic ‘y’ would yank a line into the clipboard and ‘p’ would paste it. The paste buffer wasn’t shared with any other applications though, so I’m not sure whether that’s what you have in mind.

answered May 19 '21 at 07:05

Frog

1,385
4
7

6

What's cryptic about y and p? It's better and more memorable than Ctrl+C and Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V. – Omar and Lorraine May 19 '21 at 09:02
19

@OmarL C stands for copy, X is a cross to ‘delete’, V the head of an arrow to ‘put down’. The latter two are even cross-linguistic, unlike the English-specific ‘y stands for yank, p for stands for paste’ (and ‘yank’ is a pretty uncommon word anyway). – user3840170 May 19 '21 at 09:19
9

I think the creators of vi we’re playing Russian roulette to assign functions to the alphabetic keys, but perhaps it makes perfect sense to someone who doesn’t share my mental health issues. – Frog May 19 '21 at 10:31
2

@StephenKitt It may as well, either way works. There is no such thing as an ‘incorrect’ mnemonic after all. – user3840170 May 19 '21 at 13:29
21

@StephenKitt From the inventor's mouth: ‘I chose “X”, “C” and “V” because they were all together on he keyboard near the Command key. “X” looks like a cross-out. “V” looks like an inverted caret.’ – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' May 19 '21 at 15:14
@Gilles'SO-stopbeingevil' Note that Y and P are adjacent on the Dvorak keyboard layout, which was popular among some old-school Unix people. – Darrel Hoffman May 19 '21 at 16:40
Weren't there 26 clipboards - a..z. It is simply one of the best features in vi - you have a choice of 26 clipboards. – cup May 19 '21 at 17:04
1

@Frog Not vi, but ed. vi just copied the commands from ed in this case (ed may also have copied them from somewhere else, but I’m not certain of that). In either case, it likely came down to having something that could be logically associated with the actual function (‘y’ for ‘yank’ as a way to copy text makes a whole lot more sense than randomly having it be something like ‘Q’). – Austin Hemmelgarn May 19 '21 at 17:31
7

@OmarL nah, all these terms suck. Copying? Yanking? Registers? Let's call it the KILL RING instead! – leftaroundabout May 19 '21 at 19:22
1

@user3840170: And why would "...X is a cross to ‘delete’, V the head of an arrow..." not be considered cryptic? I certainly never thought of them that way until reading your comment. Whereas "yank" is a perfectly common English word, at least to the educated English-speaking audience that were vi's target users. – jamesqf May 20 '21 at 17:19
@jamesqf I think the respective numbers of upvotes on my versus OmarL’s comment and the fact that I managed to rediscover the etymology of these shortcuts completely by accident, without particularly intending to, speak volumes as to how intuitive those associations are. – user3840170 May 20 '21 at 17:49
1

Also, as an educated, though non-native English speaker, I think I have only encountered the verb ‘yank’ a couple of years ago (having spoken the language with relative fluency for a decade or so). And I still can’t quite remember for good what it actually means. – user3840170 May 20 '21 at 17:55
2

@user3840170 ‘yank’ typically refers to an abrupt pull, similar to ‘jerk’ but perhaps more sustained or purposeful. – Frog May 20 '21 at 20:36
Wrong. vi(1) is a "personality" of the ex(1) line editor, itself an evolution of the ancient ed(1). Wiklpedia states ed is one of the first programs on Unix, around 1969. And yes, ed does allow copying and moving lines (today you'll find --somewhat evolved-- versions on any Unix/Linux system; the commands are quite similar to vi's : commands). PDP-7 Unix code (scanned from listings, etc) is on github, it contains ed (but not the manual page). – vonbrand May 21 '21 at 01:43
Before Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and Ctrl-X we had Ctrl-Ins, Shift-Ins and Ctrl-Del (which still work). The newer keys required the application to ignore them. I still use an ERP which thinks Ctrl-C modifies the data. – grahamj42 May 22 '21 at 12:39

score 14 · Answer 4 · edited May 20 '21 at 00:20

Did it exist on any non-graphical environments?

I remember when I worked for Canon in the UK, someone (hi, Dave!) had the idea of a mouse with memory. If you cut something (text or a small file), it could be stored in the mouse. You could then that mouse to another computer, plug it in, and paste what was cut. Apparently, there were similar patents in the late 80's that predated it, but I never heard of a product.

Raffzahn · Answer 5 · 2021-05-21T01:19:49.913

The idea of some buffer isn't far fetched anyway.

Additionally, did it exist on non-graphical environments as well ?

Well, in the mid 70s we used a (line orientated) editor on /370 mainframe that allowed to operate with multiple edit areas - plus one area for temporary copies. Lines could be copied into that area replacing what was there or added at the end of whatever was there. The whole temporary area or parts thereof (using line numbers) could copied back into any of the regular working areas.

So yes, kind of clipboard, but way more power full than simple copy and paste.

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered May 19 '21 at 19:16

How about QED (1967)? It had the M command to move text to a "buffer", whose contents could then be retrieved via \B. Example 2 here is essentially cut/paste:

The commands

/abcd/,$m1 
Oa \b1\f

first move several lines from the end of the current buffer to buffer 1. Then the lines are inserted at the beginning of the current buffer.

score 3 · Answer 7 · answered May 20 '21 at 23:46

The concept has been around a lot longer than the moniker. Cash registers/other mechanical/electronic calculators often had one or more memories you could store the current value or the result of a calculation into, and then recall it for use in other operations. Human calculators often used a scratch-pad for temporary memory.

I'd be willing to bet that the concept of the clip or copy board goes all the way back to the earliest newspaper layout rooms. It's probably not an accident that Apple picked that feature name, given the high percentage of news/media outlets they targeted their marketing towards

Who invented the clipboard?

7 Answers7