PRODUCT HISTORY
LIBRARY / FOSSILS / 05 PUBLISHEDFossil Friday.
Your interface is speaking a dead language and nobody told you. Each entry catalogues one object that no longer exists, and the gesture it left behind in software that everybody still understands.
Why Save is a floppy disk
The 3.5-inch floppy disk — 1.44 MB, a sliding metal shutter, a satisfying clunk
→ The Save icon, still sitting on your toolbar
Why CC means carbon copy
A sheet of carbon paper, slipped between two pages in a typewriter
→ The CC and BCC fields at the top of every email
Where the hamburger menu came from
A stack of horizontal lines drawn for the Xerox Star in 1981
→ The ☰ menu button in the corner of nearly every app
Why they're called radio buttons
The mechanical preset buttons on an old car radio
→ The little round pick-only-one buttons in every form
Why the Tab key is called Tab
The typewriter's tabulator lever, for typing neat columns
→ The Tab key that jumps you from field to field