Wednesday 4 September 2013

Computer Mouse Inventor Douglas Engelbart dies

Douglas Engelbart, a computer scientist credited with conceiving the thought of computer mouse- now ubiquitous and indispensable a part of computer system, has died. He worked like a computer scientist at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) which later patented Mouse (later licensed to Apple making commercially available in 1984 with Apple’s new Macintosh).



  • ardent believer from the idea that human-computer interaction can be used to “augmenting human intellect”
  • Initially documented as “X-Y position indicator for any display system” invention of mouse made computers user- friendly

He earned some other pioneering and “ahead of their time” discoveries in his lab- “Augmentation Research Center” :
  • Illustration showing the idea and display of initial ever “video conferencing”
  • Development of ‘hypertext’- explained how pages of knowledge could be tied together using text-based links
  • Utilization of multiple windows – real-time collaboration on a single desktop; division of a screen into windows-like subsections
  • Helped develop ARPANet – the federal government research network that led to the Internet
  • Precursors to graphical user interfaces
  • Concept of Networked computers

His famous presentation in December 1968 about his vision for future years of human-machine interaction – has become known as ‘The Mother of all Demos

  • US $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize in 1997
  • National Medal of Technology by President in 2000 “for allowing the foundations of personal computing”.

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