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The genesis of Logo, whose name comes from the Greek for "word" or "speech," dates back to the late '60s, when Papert, a confrere of the renowned Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, approached the National Science Foundation with the idea of creating a computer language accessible even to three-year-olds but powerful enough to satisfy the most demanding programmer. "A lot of what I do goes back to Piaget," says Papert. "It was from him that I learned two things about children — how much kids could learn and how easily they could be taught, their sheer joy in learning. Computers are thinking tools, and children are starved for thinking tools."
The trick to Logo as a thinking tool is that it hides its complexity behind a façade of seeming simplicity. To achieve this capability requires prodigious amounts of computer memory, and it was not until the invention of the micro processor and the mass production of in expensive computer memory chips that Logo could be loaded into the tabletop computers so popular today. Last year Texas Instruments introduced a version of Logo for their $300 home computer. This year three other firms began selling Logo interpreters for the popular Apple II. One of these, Apple's own Logo, has sold some 10,000 copies at $175 each since it became available last March, making it one of Apple's three top-selling software packages. Texas Instruments, which has backed its Logo package with a huge publicity drive, is selling home computers this year at twice last year's sales. Now other manufacturers are eager to follow suit. Versions of Logo are quickly being developed for Atari and Radio Shack home computers.
Logo has not won over everybody. Last month a conference of school computer experts in Tampa broke out in spirited debate over the language's pedagogical merits. "It makes beautiful graphics," concedes Dale Brushwood of the Orange County school board, "but I'm not convinced it's not just a gimmick." Says Dennis Hart of Chicago's board of education: "Our graduates can't get jobs writing programs in Logo."
But Logo's strongest selling point may be its ability to sell itself, especially to children. At Manhattan's J.H.S. 118, two dozen teen-agers crowd around the 14 microcomputers that line the walls of Room 519 for a chance to create their own turtle patterns. "It doesn't really matter what you want it to do," explains Roberto Deleon, 14, watching a fellow ninth-grader create a smiling face on the screen, "as long as you get to know the computer." More and more schoolchildren will. By the end of the year, industry sources estimate, about a quarter of a million students will be using Logo in school districts and private schools in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Oregon and California.
— By Philip Faflick. Reported by Lianne Hart/Houston and Peter Stoler /Boston