Who invented the "cut", "copy" and "paste" commands for personal computers?

For many people the "cut", "copy" and "paste" commands -- woven into the fabric of standard computer programs and apps -- seem as natural as the air we breathe. But they had to be invented by someone. The name of this everyday computer genius was Larry Tesler.

Lawrence Gordon Tesler (24 April 1945 – 16 February 2020) was an American computer scientist who worked in the field of human–computer interaction. He was born in the Bronx, New York and studied at Stanford University. After graduating in the early 1960s, he started work in Silicon Valley at a time when computers were inaccessible to most people. He started at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, before Steve Jobs poached him for Apple, where he spent 17 years and rose to chief scientist. After leaving Apple he set up an education start-up, and worked for brief periods at Amazon and Yahoo.

Tesler specialised in user-interface design, making computer systems more user-friendly. His famous innovation, the cut and paste command, was apparently based on the old method of editing in which people would physically cut portions of printed text and glue them elsewhere. The command was incorporated in Apple's software on the Lisa computer in 1983, and the Macintosh, released the following year.

Xerox, where Tesler began his career, paid this tribute on his death: "The inventor of cut/copy & paste, find & replace, and more, was former Xerox researcher Larry Tesler. Your workday is easier thanks to his revolutionary ideas."