storage system (i.e. the file folder and filing cabinet) in the 1960s, and finally the desktop metaphor itself (including the trashcan) in the 1970s.

David Canfield Smith associated the term "icon" with computing in his 1975 PhD thesis "Pygmalion: A Creative Programming Environment". He envisioned a scenario in which "visual entities", called icons, could execute lines of programming code, and save the operation for later re-execution. Smith later