Douglas Engelbart

Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart (born January 30, 1925 in Oregon) is an American inventor of Norwegian descent. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with William English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world's increasingly more urgent and complex problems (which Horst W. J. Rittel and others since have called wicked problems).

Career and accomplishments

Historian of science Thierry Bardini has persuasively argued that Engelbart's complex personal philosophy (which drove all his research endeavors) foreshadowed the modern application of the concept of coevolution to the philosophy and use of technology. Bardini points out that Engelbart was strongly influenced by the principle of linguistic relativity developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf.

Related Topics:
Historian - Thierry Bardini - Philosophy - Coevolution - Technology - Principle of linguistic relativity - Benjamin Lee Whorf

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Where Whorf reasoned that the sophistication of a language controls the sophistication of the thoughts that can be expressed by a speaker of that language, Engelbart reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies. He thus set himself to the revolutionary task of developing computer-based technologies for manipulating information directly, and also to improve individual and group processes for knowledge-work. Engelbart's philosophy and research agenda is most clearly and directly expressed in the 1962 research report which Engelbart refers to as his 'bible': Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. The concept of network augmented intelligence is atrributed to Engelbart based on this pioneering work.

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At SRI, Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the On-Line System, or NLS. He and his team at the Augmentation Research Center (the lab he founded) developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, multiple windows, groupware, hypertext and precursors to the graphical user interface. He conceived and developed many of his user interface ideas back in the mid-1960s, long before the personal computer revolution, at a time when most individuals were kept away from computers, and could only use computers through intermediaries (see batch processing), and when software tended to be written for vertical applications in proprietary systems.

Related Topics:
On-Line System - Augmentation Research Center - Hypertext - Graphical user interface - 1960s - Batch processing

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In 1970 Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse {{US patent|3,541,541}}), describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end. It was also called the bug at the time (as evidenced by Engelbart's personal correspondence on file at Stanford) but eventually this practice died out.

Related Topics:
1970 - Patent - Computer mouse

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He never received any royalties for his mouse invention, partly because his patent expired in 1987, before the personal computer revolution made the mouse an indispensable input device, and also because subsequent mice used different mechanisms that did not infringe upon the original patent. During an interview, he says "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later I learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

Related Topics:
Royalties - Apple

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Engelbart showcased many of his and ARC's inventions in 1968 at the so-called mother of all demos.

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Because Engelbart's research and tool-development for online collaboration and interactive human-computer interfaces was partially funded by ARPA, SRI's ARC and UCLA became the first two nodes on the ARPANET (the precursor of the Internet). ARC soon became the first Network Information Center and thus managed the directory for connections among all ARPANET nodes. ARC also published a large percentage of the early Request For Comments, an ongoing series of publications that document the evolution of ARPANET/Internet.

Related Topics:
ARPA - ARPANET - Internet - Network Information Center - Request For Comment

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