Archive.org is on a bit of a roll lately. After recently making available 25,000+ digitized 78rpm records from the early 20th century, they’ve turned around and put online Apple Hypercard software. When Hypercard was released in 1987, The New York Times published an article entitled “Apple to Introduce Unusual Software,” which began:
Apple Computer Inc. will introduce an unusual database and management information program Tuesday that the company hopes will help it maintain its lead in technology for making computers easy to use.
The new software, known as Hypercard, will enable users of Apple’s Macintosh computers to organize information on computerized file cards that can be linked to other file cards in intricate ways. The program will be included for no charge with each Macintosh sold, starting this month.
Hypercard made its appearance precisely when Apple also released “a communications device, known as a modem, that will enable the Macintosh to send documents to and from facsimile machines.” Some of us still use modems today. Hypercard, not so much. At least not directly.
As Hypercard’s creator Bill Atkinson indicates above, Hypercard started working with the hypertext concept that’s now prevalent on the web today. Think those links you find in HTML. On Archive.org, you can find and play with Hypercard software, or what they call emulated Hypercard stacks. (They also host a library of emulated software for the early Macintosh computer). Read more about Archive.org’s Hypercard project on their blog here.
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