[TUHS] Where/when did TUIs come from

[Henry Bent]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 14:14, Adam Koszek <adam at koszek.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I got interested in UI design and often study some historical aspects of
> it as I work on software. It’s hard not to notice how fast/usable Text User
> Interfaces are—ncurses and its siblings are still alive and well. From the
> ergonomy point of view, not needing a mouse in those interfaces if perfect.
>
> Question: where did TUIs come from originally, and what were their
> earliest instances?
>
> Many pages state that Vi was the first, but I’ve been looking through some
> old hardware photos, and things capable of more sophisticated interactions
> existed before Vi:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen
>
> Some terminals with block display:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270
>
> ^ ’71. Wiki says Vi showed up in ’76, but I suspect IBM mainframes may
> have had TUIs before.
>
> Question 2: were there any manuals talking about TUIs? I’m thinking some
> of those spiffy IBM things mandating certain design.
>

Does this count?  I was just looking at it the other day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Editing_System

I have a feeling we're going to get away from UNIX pretty quickly here.

-Henry
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