History
A small icon of a waste container for deleting files was implemented during the development of the Apple Lisa user interface in 1982, where it was called the “Wastebasket.” The concept carried over to the Apple Macintosh, as the “Trash”, except in the pre-OS 9 “International English” localization, which retained “Wastebasket.”
Apple Inc. sued to prevent other software companies from offering graphical user interfaces similar to its own. Apple lost most of its claims but courts agreed Apple's Trash icon was original and protected by copyright. Non-Apple software may use other metaphors for file deletion, such as Recycle Bin, Smart Eraser, or Shredder.
In early versions of the Macintosh Finder, Trash contents were listed in volatile memory. Files moved to the Trash would appear there only until the Finder session ended, then they would be automatically erased. When System 7 was released, the Trash became a folder that retained its contents until the user chose to empty the trash.
Microsoft first implemented the "trash can" concept in MS-DOS 6, under the name Delete Sentry: When a file was deleted, it was moved to a hidden SENTRY folder at the root of the drive. Microsoft introduced its current trash system, the Recycle Bin, with Windows 95, as an area to store and review files and folders prior to deletion. In this version, the original location record of the file is stored, but the folder itself didn't allow subdirectories. When a folder is deleted, its containing files are moved into the bin and mixed with other deleted files. The directory structure can only be restored if the batch of files are "undeleted". The current (revised) Recycle Bin allows for subdirectory trees to exist within folders that have been moved there.
Read more about this topic: Trash (computing)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)