Douglas Engelbart : The Mother of All Demos (3/9)

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

(1/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs
(2/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=a11JDLBXtPQ
(3/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=61oMy7Tr-bM
(4/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=fNXLK78ZaFo
(5/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=7zz1SwCTCEE
(6/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=6dVNxlLYTsQ
(7/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=XiJA7_Sw9aM
(8/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=EI8LZKW5Lwk
(9/9) http://youtube.com/watch?v=VYDg2wr2QfI

See also the Stanford Mousesite http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/ for the complete annotated version of the demo and background, as well as the Doug Engelbart Institute http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html for more great resources.

Credit to SRI International

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• NLS
• Augmentation
• Research
• Center
• Doug
• Douglas
• Engelbart
• first
• GUI
• 1968
• 60s

[DKantify]

This was in 1968. And in 82 we had freaking MS-DOS.

Sure the Apple computers and eventually Windows followed, but still. It's unbelievable when you look at this, or even at the relatively modern (but still old) NEXT demos, how little has really changed since then. Most such changes have just been evolutionary, and cosmetic - hardly revolutionary. Is it that they pretty much nailed it in '68 (and through subsequent years of research), or have we just failed to imagine?

[douro20]

Their use of video overlay in a computing environment was the first ever. The technology already existed to do this, but this was the first time it was ever used in such a manner.

[Jemmer1000]

Hey, Doug, how do I get Netflix on this machine?

[DKantify]

oh, all that was @cwilbr. I hate that I have to remember to put this in. What happened to 'Reply' buttons the web used to have - or still horribly misuses? Just put the @ in there when I hit 'Reply' and for god's sakes don't thread the conversation. Simple as that. Come on GOOG...

[DKantify]

Kinect especially. Even Surface seemed cool at the time, just not anywhere even remotely applicable - it belonged in one of those fancy concept homes every tech company worth it's salt (or good old Discovery Channel) shows off but never actually realises!

Another case of market conditions lagging behind the R&D. :) Or maybe Microsoft were just thinking the wrong size? ;)

[DKantify]

I wasn't pointing at Microsoft specifically, pretty much ALL tech companies seem to have dropped the ball at some point in pushing technology forward. Of course thinking about it now, I realise there can easily be a huge gap between what people can do in a research lab and what can realistically be mass-manufactured and sold to mainstream consumers, but still... :)

There is no denying Microsoft has a TON of cool stuff going on now. ....post continued

[cwilbr]

@DKantify How about add the touch screen for some usefulness (not to control the computer in all capacities, that is stupid!) as Windows computers/laptops have, also a MS 'Kinect' (hacked via PC/Mac) integration that people are doing some massively awesome things with as a good form in combination with the usual mouse/keyboard as the next big step? :) MS are creating a fair few revolutionary things atm that others such as Samsung and even Apple will follow eventually.

[cwilbr]

@DKantify How about add the touch screen for some usefulness (not to control the computer in all capacities, that is stupid!) as Windows computers/laptops have, also a MS 'Kinect' (hacked via PC/Mac) integration that people are doing some massively awesome things with as a good form in combination with the usual mouse/keyboard as the next big step? :) MS are creating a fair few revolutionary things atm that others such as Samsung and even Apple will follow eventually.

[DrLsw]

now why the hell did they modifiy that x y axis and add a track ball on top of it?!

[DrLsw]

@DKantify makes me kind of wonder, did microsoft actually do any good for the advancement of computers?! or just set it back, think. it went from this in 68 almost identical in use and speed to w98 to friken msdos and command line

[DrLsw]

@DKantify i know right! im gonna have to review my understanding of the history of operating systems lol, i also just found out a company called symbolics had hd display in the 80s on personal workstation! 1024 display wtf?! haha

[DrLsw]

@douro20 this guy.. way ahead of his time.