What are interfaces and how have they developed?

In this blog i will be exploring an answer to the question; What are interfaces and how have they developed? I will be looking at some of the very first interface designs and see how they have developed over a period of time.
So what is an interface? One definition of an interface is “ a layout of an application’s graphic or textual controls in conjunction with the way the application responds to user activity.” For example the interface on a computer could be the desktop becasue of the icons it uses. One of the earliest interfaces was the mouse. The mouse was created by Doug Englebart, the mouse is important for because you can simply point to options and objects and click a mouse button.
The very first user interface was on the Xerox Alto which was built in 1973. This had a screen with icons.




The Xerox Alto influeced the very first commercially avaliable Apple Macintosh. The Mac was built in 1984 and as you can see in the picture below it uses icons, many of which are still used today.



This is the interface of the new Windows 7. As you can see it still uses icons, but it has developed significantly over time when you compareit the Xerox Alto and the Mac.



Interfaces have developed overtime and im sure in the future they will be enhanced again.