Do you, or have you ever, used a graphical user interface? If you use #Windows, #macOS, or any version of #Linux with a window manager or desktop environment, you can thank Dr. Clarence "Skip" Ellis.

Dr. Ellis worked at Xerox PARC, the research organization that developed the modern GUI. Icons, windows, the mouse, Ethernet-based networking, laser printing - all of these (and more) came out of PARC. Dr. Ellis led the team that created Officetalk, the first program to use icons and the Internet. He got his start at 15 years old showing a local tech company how to reuse punch cards, which was a game-changer back in 1958.

Oh, and he was also the first black man to earn a PhD in Computer Science.

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackHistory #BlackMastodon #ComputerScience @blackmastodon

elective.collegeboard.org/clar…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence…
redhat.com/en/command-line-her…

I think it's really cool that Black American Sign Language is in some ways more conservative than the kind of #ASL you learn at Gallaudet University.

Other ASL varieties use a lot of handshapes influenced by English spelling. But black ASL has kept more of the original handshapes, because black #deaf schools didn't get hit so hard by the oralist reformers who made war on ASL.

You can see BASL in action at csdhh.org/black-asl

#BlackHistoryMonth

Black ASL — CSDHH

^CSDHH