Douglas Engelbart Douglas Engelbart

by

Alexander Stoytchev






Early years:

Douglas Engelbart was born on January 30, 1925, in Portland, Oregon. He grew up during the Great Depression on a small farmstead near Portland, Oregon. After graduating from high school in 1942, he went on to study Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University. Setting his studies aside, he joined the Navy during World War II, serving for two years as an electronic/radar technician in the Phillipines.

Education:

Ideas:

Even before he applied for a Ph.D. degree he has read about the development of the computer, and seriously considered how it might be used to support mankind's efforts to solve these problems. As a radar technician he had seen how information could be displayed on a screen. He began to envision people sitting in front of displays, "flying around" in an information space where they could formulate and organize their ideas with incredible speed and flexibility.

While at UC Berkeley he published several patents and in the later years this trend continued at a steady fashion. Now Douglas Engelbart is officially recognized to be the first one to think of the following breakthrough ideas:

  • the mouse
  • 2-dimensional display editing
  • in-file object addressing and linking
  • hypermedia
  • outline processing
  • flexible view control
  • multiple windows
  • cross-file editing
  • integrated hypermedia email
  • hypermedia publishing
  • document version control
  • shared-screen teleconferencing

  • computer-aided meetings
  • formatting directives
  • context-sensitive help
  • distributed client-server architecture
  • uniform command syntax
  • universal "user-interface" front end module
  • multi-tool education
  • grammar-driven command language interpreter
  • protocols for virtual terminals
  • remote procedure call protocols
  • compilable "Command Meta Language"


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    Knee pointing deviceEngelbart was also experimenting with other innovative devices that never became popular. The image to the left shows probably the most interesting of these: the knee pointing device (an early prototype of the mouse).




    While the mouse mouse helped with pointing, Engelbard needed efficient ways to enter the commands - i.e. to tell the computer what to do there. He started by streamlining the commands on his NLS system to be single-character recognition, such as typing a "d" for "Delete". Next he invented this keyset for chording the command keys using the left hand. [1]

    A great event in the history of HCI:

    In 1968, at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Engelbart revealed his revolutionary prototype, the NLS (oN Line System) . It was then that he demonstrated for the first time such futuristic technology as the mouse, word processing, and on-line networking, technology that eventually led to the development of the personal computer at Xerox PARC . [5]

    He was able to log into an utterly primitive (by today standards) 192 kilobyte mainframe computer located 25 miles away in his lab at Stanford Research Institute.

    This is now considered to be probably the most important event in the history of Human-Computer interaction.

    The future:

    While the rest of the world is catching up to his past, Engelbart continues to point to the future.

    In 1989 he founded the Bootstrap Institute, feeling the time was ripe to pursue in earnest his comprehensive strategy for bootstrapping organizations into the 21st century. His focus continues to be in creating high-performance organizations by fostering bootstrapping communities, researching and developing the enabling technologies, best practices, and special strategies for developing and deploying these capabilities on a continuous improvement basis, with pro-active participation from stakeholders in government, industry, and society.

    Now Douglas Engelbart divides his time between R&D, consulting, publications, speaking engagements, and leading seminars, workshops, and participatory "expeditions".

    Image gallery:

    First MouseThe first mouse.

    This was the setup used at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer conference demonstration.

    Douglas Engelbart holding the original mouse that he invented and a modern mouse.

    Just smiling.

    References:

    [1] http://www.bootstrap.org/dce-cv.htm

    [2] Douglas Engelbart, Dreaming of the Future, Byte Magazine, Vol. 20(9):330, Sept. 1995

    [3] http://web.mit.edu/invent/www/inventorsA-H/engelbart.html

    [4] http://www.cel.sfsu.edu/msp/Lectureseries/Engelbartbio.html

    [5] http://www.cel.sfsu.edu/msp/timeline/Engelbart1.html