Plato

PLATO, an apronym for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation, was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. PLATO ran for many years at the U of I, but William Norris's plans to make it a major force in the computing world and a keystone of corporate social responsibility failed. Although the project was economically a failure and supplanted by other technologies when it was finally turned off in the 1990s, PLATO nevertheless pioneered key concepts such as online forums and message boards, online testing, email, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer online games.

Innovation

• Plasma display, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO III.
• Touch Panel, circa 1964, by Donald Bitzer for PLATO III.
• Show Display Mode, a graphics application generator for TUTOR software, precursor to Apple's QuickDraw picture language editor.
• Charset Editor, an early version of MacPaint for drawing bitmapped pictures stored in downloadable fonts.
• Airfight, circa 1972, a 3-D flight simulator written for PLATO by Brand Fortner; this probably inspired UIUC student Bruce Artwick to start Sublogic which was acquired and later became Microsoft Flight Simulator.
• Empire, a 30 person inter-terminal 2-D real-time space simulation, circa 1974.
• Monitor Mode on PLATO, circa 1975, used by instructors to help students, precursor of Timbuktu screen-sharing software.
• Notes, the first general-purpose computer message board, and precursor to Unix Newsgroups and Lotus Notes, 1973.
• Talkomatic, a real-time chat room (text-based), 1974
• Term-Talk, precursor to instant messaging, circa 1974
• Panzer, circa 1977, a 3-D tank simulation that spawned Atari's Battlezone game.
• Think15, circa 1977, 2-D outdoor wilderness quest simulation, like Trek with monsters, trees, treasures.
• Avatar, circa 1978, a 2.5-D Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), a precursor to EverQuest.
• Freecell, circa 1978 by Paul Alfille, which probably spawned the Windows version.