[TUHS] Where/when did TUIs come from

[Adam Koszek]

I think it counts! I was suspecting TUIs were either an IBM thing or UNIX thing—not sure if it’s < 1970 direction or > 1970 direction. In UNIX, someone must have added code for the cursor addressing for CRT screens b/c on printer terminals moving back a page … wasn’t possible?

Adam

> On Jun 9, 2025, at 11:21 AM, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 at 14:14, Adam Koszek <adam at koszek.com <mailto: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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