‘A programming tool for the rest of us’

IDEA No 17

HYPERCARD

The year 1987 saw the release of the Apple Macintosh II. Bundled with it was a piece of software called HyperCard. This was the world’s first programming tool for non-programmers.

A screenshot from the HyperGlot language-teaching software, one of the many pieces of commercial software made on HyperCard.

HyperCard was created by Bill Atkinson, who also created MacPaint. His aim was to ‘bridge the gap between the priesthood of programmers and the Macintosh mouse clickers.’ The software allowed users to create a stack of cards, populated with text, images, audio and video. What made HyperCard ...

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