Douglas Engelbart : The Mother of All Demos (1/9)

[Neojhun]

I don't get it how the system could handle video over such fair distance so smoothely. I assume it is because it is a hybrid of digital and analogue. I wish i could have such effortless video today on a computer 10,000 more powerful.

[Neojhun]

He Should not of called it RESEARCH. It was creation, the birth of something that would change the universe. The birth of the tangible Metaphysical World,

[andrija11]

2 punch card operators disliked this video

[cepson]

This video gives me goosebumps. I don't care who invented what, it's like looking at the dawn of a new age.

[wankyler]

This video should get the Mother of All Likes.

[jwhite8789]

I wish I could go back in time and show these people an iPad to see how they'd react.

[limafilho27]

this video is pure history and must never leave the web. thanks for posting it.

[nholt]

Apple stole this idea and Microsoft stole it from Apple.

[samgod]

@nholt Apple stole nothing. Graphic User Interfaces had existed in labs for decades in primitive forms. Apple did more work than any other company to develop it into the fully functional, consumer-friendly level of refinement we use today/. The Mac project started at Apple in 1978, long before the visit to PARC.

[Hunkola]

@samgod ---- Go watch "Pirates of Silicon Valley"........Steve Jobs did in fact steal GUI from Xerox.......that fact can't be denied

[yaroslavkhnygin]

@Hunkola Oh fuck yes, facile pseudo-documentary film is a very reliable source of information.

[daEmoNicky]

@Hunkola I read ... it was product of Raskin, he saw that GUI when he was student at university, and his project was almost closed. Later they improved over Xerox's system (app menu, overlapped windows were redrawn ...). Xerox failed to sell their system. POSV seems not so accurate ...

[w3bt3k]

@Hunkola Xerox's venture capitalist wing had invested in Apple. The scientists at PARC didn't like it, but Jobs asked to see it, they showed it to Jobs, and even game him documents. Google "Vannevar Bush", Memex, "As We May Think" 1945! Even Xerox PARC "stole" ideas from him and Douglas Engelbart. Check out the "Mother of all Demos".

[w3bt3k]

@w3bt3k Sorry, I meant "Check out all these Mother of All Demos clips."

[samgod]

@Hunkola You're getting your understanding of historical facts from a movie? Interesting. According to that movie, Apple started Mac development after visiting PARC. The sheer number of things that movie got wrong (which the writers themselves admit to) renders it useless as a judgement of history. I loved the movie, and it was fun, but off base on many counts. Apple stealing the GUI from PARC being one of the bigger ones, that even people at PARC had to correct.

[hyoga2k]

@Hunkola "Pirates of Silicon Valley" just show a part of history. If you put more attention, Apple people visit the PARC and have a demo from Xerox engineers. The key is on the short-time vision of Xerox board, that didn't consider the GUI as a massively profitable product. In fact, Xerox sold computers with the GUI technology. Search for Xerox Alto, a GUI-based computer, 3 years before Apple was founded.

[BeastlyRig]

Full 240p! 47 inch round screen Back then? $19,999

[Phendraana]

This video singlehandedly makes up for all the stupid shit on YouTube.

[rickcain2320]

Yeah yeah its all easy when you have captured alien space technology to use!

[jdkforchrist]

Would you look at the size of that keyboard!

[capricious71]

This was unbelievable for the times. Seems strange it took so long for us to be using this stuff.

p.s. the ZX Spectrum made the best noises of all.

[GuitarHeroRulez321]

Thank you, DARPA.

[psiXoniK]

i want that keyboard/mousepad system :D

[edshift]

The whole 9 parts are the single most eye-opening pieces of video I've ever watched.

I was sitting shaking my head in disbelief repeatedly.

Almost every technology I use today (I'm a software developer) was illustrated to the audience.

Mouse, Hypertext, Netmeeting, Huge chunks of MS Sharepoint. Hierarchical file systems with a gui interface, Metatags. Web 2.0 stuff (leaving messages attached to a document)

It's my belief that we have yet to fully realise the vision set out in this presentation.

[LinuxGalore]

This video is in 1968, the first prototype mouse was made in 1964. I notice they have cut and past in 1968, funnily it has taken Apple and Microsoft over a year to get the same feature on their latest mobile OS..

[cwilbr]

@LinuxGalore I have had copy/paste for over 3 years and it is not MS/Apple.

[reinruof66]

I want that keyboard.

[DarthAzmul]

Holy shit is that a mouse arrow in the 1960s?I didnt think mice were used on computers till the late 80s.

[bphutchins]

Well maybe this will shut the idiots up about WHICH COUNTRY developed the majority of computer technology.

[infinitehumanstupid]

@bphutchins Country's don't develop anything... it is individuals. There were thousands of people who were not Americans (nationalities are becoming obsolete anyways, just look at the converging world culture / habits / tastes). Don't forget Turing, and the early Greeks... who was Julius Edgar Lilienfeld? Was he Hungarian, American or ? Although you do have to give credit to the budget of the US-army, and business mentality in that region. Country is a social construct anyhow.

[bphutchins]

@infinitehumanstupid Obviously a country isn't a sentient being that creates things, perhaps I should have worded it differently. American culture. I was responding to the rampant discrediting of anything and everything that our society has produced over the years that takes place on youtube. Probably a pointless thing to do, but oh well. And I should point out that the globalization and converging of cultures is really a reflection of the omnipresent American presence on the planet.

[pauljs75]

I like how he has the equivalent of the F-keys in their own pad on the far left. In some ways that seems a lot more useful in conjunction with mousing than the current top row layout. (But at least nowadays we can use any key on the keyboard as a hotkey in a program context related manner, so it doesn't matter as much.)

[bphutchins]

@pauljs75 I remember some old keyboards having function keys on the side like a num pad.

[edshift]

@bphutchins It's not a number pad. It's a chord keyboard. You make inputs to the computer based on combinations of simultaneous key-presses.

It never really caught on but apparently after a steep learning curve it's amazingly efficient.

[HHGFHJGFHJGFJTYFJDGY]

the steve jobs stevenote keynote of the 1960's

[pyrolimeade]

Absolutely historic. Like Thomas Edison demonstrating the long lasting incandescent light bulb at Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1879.

[livordie4eelam]

WTF???are we still using keyboard and mouse???we are fucking old...

[livordie4eelam]

these guys would have got it from aliens!!!

[JackCappa]

4:50 Interesting to see the chorded keyboard operating

[fiftycaliberfistfuck]

Mouse is nothing but a trackball turned up side down. Any kid who can flip over a bowl of cereal could do the same thing. There was nothing 'revolutionary' about it'. It was more evolutionary.

[dgodiex]

what's wrong with you?

no, seriously.

[Slider2k]

Engelbart is truly a prophet of IT modern age. Only recently things started to emerge, that he envisioned back in 60s. He turns 85 this January 30th.

[NDoomsday82]

This is incredible!

[heavypeki]

This guy invented a mouse!!!

[topdeck55]

@heavypeki Doug and others at the SRI invented the mouse, including Rulifson and English.

[journeyquest1]

the brains behind steve jobs riches and fame.....what a shame. thanks stanford.

[cyberjaya1]

@journeyquest1 Rngelbart received his PhD from UC Berkeley

[journeyquest1]

@cyberjaya1 But the research was conducted at Stanford as i understood.

[TechHisotry]

New Book "The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart" by Valerie Landau & Eileen Clegg in conversation with Douglas Engelbart describes how Engelbart's vision drove his innovation process. "The Engelbart Hypothesis" clearly articulates his message for the first time in 50 years shedding light on the secrets long ignored.

[DNulrammah]

@TechHisotry i first heard about

Englebart in a book entitled 'POPLORICA"

wriiten by Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger. They dedicated an entire chapter

(16) to him.

[francomaroc]

Voilà pourquoi YouTube dois existé! Pour faire partager ce genre de vidéo.

[prfit]

I just read "What the Dormouse Said" and had to see this. Having grown up with the internet, it's hard to even imagine how magical & revolutionary this demo must have seemed at the time. Now I've gotta get my hands on a USB chordboard or whatever he named that mini keyboard.

[omniquiddity]

We already have these 'mini keyboards':

Nostromo n52 by Belkin, for example.

They're programmable 'gamepads' so that each key may stand for any keyboard strike--or even a series of them (micros).

I use pretty much the same layout as you see in the video--fortunately, much updated--and it is way productive in everything from Photoshop to browsing the internet.

Just add a digital tablet for drawing with a pressure stylus...mounted on an adjustable swing-arm monitor mount and you're all set.

[DrN0OB]

Unfortunately, people that saw this at the time thought "Ya Right!"

What is amazing is this is just 22 years after the 1st digital computer.

[zcxspam]

Thanks so much for uploading this. It is history.

[prisonson]

HOLY SHIT

THIS IS THE BEST UTUBE VIDEO

[PatrickSchabus]

jes

[Fanscale]

Doesn't he sound like HAL from 2001?!!!

[Digeridude]

I like the irony in that the title cards are typed on paper.

[Saxyman14]

It's probably on purpose. You know, creativity? Showing the contrast between early and advanced technology.

[maggosh]

That's...amazing. DECADES ahead of its time.

[moremost]

and TODAY it's on YouTube

before YouTube, just 3-4 years ago, it was even hard to show such videos online for free with one click, you can't image now after the explosion of web video hosters

[avatarelite]

yes, he invented the GUI it must have been enormous.

[rubber4532]

This guy was a freakin genius!! He predicted the future of computers!

[Digeridude]

He didn't predict it, silly. He's not psychic. He CREATED it.

[pojstla]

amazing :D

[rndmcnlly]

Man, computers used to make the most awesome noises.

[DreadfulRay]

@rndmcnlly Sadly I don't think they were audible normally. It's just whatever they used to record the demonstration picking up the electronic computer signals as interference.

[mozartkugeln]

@rndmcnlly

They still do today! Get your ear on the cabinet. I´m sure this is not correct English but you know what I mean.

[lidarman2]

@rndmcnlly ...and the computer users made other interesting noises when trying to deal with them.

[Invisibrah]

@rndmcnlly

Sounds like EM disturbance feeding into the microphone.

[dotOneOne]

Normally, a lot of predictions are so unrealistic from inventors like we will be ... in 30 years time but Engelbarts legendary in the practicality of his inventions which I find most impressive about him!

[beautypersoni]

It's wonderful to see how much things have advanced since then, but I also find it so amazing to see how *familiar* the system shown is to those we use today. (Actually, that system would probably work better today than Vista does. ;-P Anyhoo...

[uiaiui]

yeah, even the form of presentation reminds me of how Steve Jobs does it. But hey - am I the only happy Vista User out there?

[beautypersoni]

Naw, there are a few of you people out there. ;-) But for me, I'm sick of all the problems with little aspects of Vista that should make it intuitive and easy to use. Then there's the unstable Explorer and the terrible IE7. And the "integration" idea? Sure, it sounds nice, but these days it's rather moot with regards to speed, and is actually a horrible idea when it comes to security. And then there's the fact that not everyone wants to use a Microsoft program for everything they do. Anyhoo...

[spage1970]

These videos are amazing. To think of the sights and sounds of the late 60s and relate them to what is happening here, things that only now 40 years later are common place. Totally amazing.

These videos as historic documents are priceless for American and World history.

I think something like this says America did have the knowledge to go to the moon, they certainly did the other things!

Stunning.

[va21youth]

I watched these numerous times before. It's amazing to see how they could not only for see but also, make happen so many of the things we take for granted today, If people had the vision of these men we'd all be riding in flying electric cars, run on joy and happiness. Well maybe not, but how many researchers to do we say are just wacked out and yet 40 years from now those idea will be common place.

[TheFri13]

@va21youth We would have flying cars, most having electric cars (electric cars were used more than gasoline cars in 1900) if there would not be so big international corporations what are holding innovations back. Patent system is slowing down everyone instread doing what it should be, giving a new innovators a time to bring inventions to markets. Problem is in big corporations, not that we would not have (poor) people to innovate!

[kroider911]

Haha, Engelbart sounds like Microsoft Sam ;D

[Cormier6083]

This seems so ancient. Makes me wonder what the people of the future will say about us.

[alizta]

Quite impressice for a time where ram was handmade.

[arhalle]

impressice?

imprecise?

It's difficult to understand what you're trying to say.

[kmcallenberg]

With a little bit of inference... the 'c' is next to the 'v' on the qwerty keyboard. I believe Alitza was trying to say 'impressive.'

[arhalle]

Good work!  Now I see!

[kottan1970]

Absolutely great !

[Membrane556]

No wonder Aurthur C Clarke thought we'd have HAL9000 by 2001.

[sb314159]

This is totally awesome! Thank you!

[Rebel2067]

Amazing if you see this was already there in 1968!

[kevpaulc]

thanks jejeje i was needing this for a homework