---
title: "The Early History of Smalltalk"
authors:
  - "Alan C. Kay"
year: 1993
venue: "HOPL-II / ACM SIGPLAN Notices"
arxiv: null
doi: "10.1145/155360.155364"
source: "https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155364"
topics:
  - smalltalk
  - kay
  - object-oriented
  - hopl
  - history
seed_rank: 680
seed_batch: "perfects-pl-2026-08-13"
reviewed: "2026-08-13"
pool: "languages"
relevance_score: 10
lineage: programming-language-foundations
cites:
  - title: "Design Principles Behind Smalltalk"
    url: "https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html"
    year: 1981
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
  - title: "Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation"
    url: "https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/273"
    year: 1983
    arxiv: null
    doi: null
  - title: "Viewing Control Structures as Patterns of Passing Messages"
    url: "https://doi.org/10.1016/0004-3702(77)90033-9"
    year: 1977
    arxiv: null
    doi: "10.1016/0004-3702(77)90033-9"
see:
  - "681-design-principles-behind-smalltalk"
  - "682-smalltalk-80-the-language-and-its-implementation"
  - "683-viewing-control-structures-as-patterns-of-passing-messages"
---

# The Early History of Smalltalk

## One-sentence takeaway

Kay's HOPL-II history recasts 1960s ARPA interactive computing as a *new thing* — Dynabook, overlapping windows, and objects that only communicate by messages — of which Smalltalk was the first complete realization.

## Why it matters here

This is the object/message origin story Broadside should cite when an Anoptic entity or a GRID COMMAND unit is tempted to become a "class hierarchy" instead of a protected cell that only talks through messages.

## Key ideas

- The sixties were not a better mainframe; exponential cost/volume demanded personal media, a Montessori-style UI, and a biological metaphor (universal cells, no naked data/control structures).
- Early Smalltalk iterations (72 through 80) were deliberately extreme so the new style had to be invented rather than bolted onto old languages.
- Personal dynamic media (the Dynabook) is the goal; the language is the means.
- HOPL-II / *SIGPLAN Notices* 28(3), 1993, DOI 10.1145/155360.155364. Pair with Ingalls 1981 and the Blue Book.

## Caveats

## Links

- DOI: [10.1145/155360.155364](https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155364)