Editing Xerox Star (section)

===The Xerox Alto===
{{Main|Xerox Alto}}
The Xerox Star system's concept owes much to the [[Xerox Alto]], an experimental workstation designed by the [[PARC (company)|Xerox Palo Alto Research Center]] (PARC). The first Alto became operational in 1972. The Alto had been strongly influenced by what its designers had seen previously with the [[NLS (computer system)|NLS]] computer system at the [[SRI International|Stanford Research Institute]] and [[PLATO (computer system)|PLATO]] at University of Illinois.<ref name=clement>"The History of the Xerox Alto". Carl J. Clement. March 2002.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Dear|first=Brian|title=The Friendly Orange Glow: The untold story of the PLATO System and the dawn of cyberculture|date=2017|publisher=Pantheon Books|isbn=978-1-101-87155-3|pages=186–187}}</ref> At first, only a few Altos had been built.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Canfield Smith|first1=David|last2=Irby |first2=Charles |last3=Kimball |first3=Ralph |last4=Verplank |first4=Bill |last5=Harslem |first5=Eric |title=Designing the Star User Interface|magazine=[[Byte (magazine)|BYTE]] |date=April 1982 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=242–282 |url=https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1982-04/1982_04_BYTE_07-04_Human_Factors_Engineering#page/n243/mode/2up}}</ref> Although by 1979 nearly 1,000 Ethernet-linked Altos had been put into operation at Xerox and another 500 at collaborating universities and government offices,<ref name="parchis">{{cite web |url=http://www.parc.com/about/history/ |title=PARC Milestones |access-date=November 13, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081217164857/http://www.parc.com/about/history/ |archive-date=December 17, 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref> it was never intended to be a commercial product.<ref name=fumble>{{cite book
 | author = Douglas K. Smith
 | author2=Robert C. Alexander
 | title = Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer
 | publisher = William Morrow
 | location = New York
 | year =  1988
 | isbn = 0-688-06959-2
}}</ref> Then in 1977,<ref name="The Xerox Star">{{Cite web |title=The Xerox Star |url=http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html |access-date=April 18, 2022 |website=toastytech.com}}</ref> Xerox started a development project which worked to incorporate the Alto innovations into a commercial product; their concept was an integrated document preparation system, centered on the expensive [[laser printing]] technology and targeted at large corporations and their trading partners. When the resulting Star system was announced in 1981,<ref name="parchis"/> the cost was about {{US$|75,000|1981|round=-3}} for a basic system, and {{US$|16,000|1981|round=-3}} for each added workstation.  A base system includes an 8010 Star workstation, and an 8010 dedicated as a server (with RS232 I/O), and a floor-standing laser printer. The server software includes a File Server, a Print Server, and distributed services (Mail Server, Clearinghouse Name Server / Directory, and Authentication Server). [[Word processor (electronic device)|Xerox Memorywriter]] typewriters connect to this system over Ethernet and send email, using the Memorywriter as a [[teletype]].