Development of Smalltalk started in 1969, and its first release was in 1972 - which is well before 1976. As far as whether Kay invented objects, no, Simula was released in 1967, well before development of Smalltalk had started. But Kay was the one to popularize objects as we think of them today.
Rochus•14h ago
> But Kay was the one to popularize objects as we think of them today.
Not actually. Kay's view of OO is pretty different from what we understand of OO today; the general understanding is closer to Simula 67; see also the IEEE milestone: https://ethw.org/Milestones:Object-Oriented_Programming,_196.... Ironically Smalltalk-76 and onwards also corresponds more with the Simula 67's than Kay's view.
> Development of Smalltalk started in 1969
You mix that up with Kay's PhD. A good and reliable history about the origin and evolution of Smalltalk can be found in the excellent 2020 paper by Ingalls: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386335
taylodl•16h ago
Rochus•14h ago
Not actually. Kay's view of OO is pretty different from what we understand of OO today; the general understanding is closer to Simula 67; see also the IEEE milestone: https://ethw.org/Milestones:Object-Oriented_Programming,_196.... Ironically Smalltalk-76 and onwards also corresponds more with the Simula 67's than Kay's view.
> Development of Smalltalk started in 1969
You mix that up with Kay's PhD. A good and reliable history about the origin and evolution of Smalltalk can be found in the excellent 2020 paper by Ingalls: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386335