Larry Tesler: Inventor of cut, copy and paste dies at 74

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Washington DC: Larry Tesler, the computer pioneer who created the ingenious cut, copy and paste functions, passed away on Monday (local time) at the age of 74. These widely used computer features we oftentimes take for granted have made the lives of countless computer users easier over many years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The Verge cited Gizmodo according to which Tesler, who was born in 1945 in New York, pursued his degree in Computer Science at Stanford University. It was the year 1973 when he developed the cut, copy and paste features while working at Xerox`s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

PARC has been widely recognised for its initial research on the graphical user interface and its usage through the means of a computer mouse. According to The Verge, Tesler was also an advocate for "modeless" computing, a concept which ensures that a computer application shouldn`t have separate "modes" where input by the user results in different outputs depending on whichever mode the application is running on.

Tesler also served a long stint in Apple between the years 1980 and 1997 where he contributed towards the development of numerous products such as Macintosh, QuickTime, Lisa, and the Newton tablet.

Lisa and Macintosh were the first PC platforms that popularised the cut, copy and paste features, made possible chiefly due to Tesler`s involvement.

In the year 1993, Tesler was promoted to the position of chief scientist, a role that was also served by Steve Wozniak, The Verge quoted Gizmodo.

Tesler then went on to join Stagecast, an educational software startup that was a spinoff from Apple.

After working for information technology giants by the likes of Amazon and Yahoo -- from 2009 onwards -- he established a UX consultancy in California.