Today in Technology History
(Published weekdays. To receive "Today in Technology History" by e-mail, click here. To read past issues, click here.)
January 30
The inventor of the computer mouse turns 78 years old today.
Douglas Carl Engelbart was born on January 30, 1925 in Oregon. He studied electrical engineering in college, taking two years off to serve in the Navy as a radar technician in World War II. After a few years working for NACA, the predecessor to NASA, he went to study electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Engelbart's mind was filled with visions of people using computers to reorganize their lives, their businesses, their society -- even though the closest computer was probably across the country at M.I.T. when he got his Ph.D. in 1955.
Engelbart has always been a visionary, with ideas so radical that even he has trouble communicating them clearly. He imagines ways to "augment human intellect" and "boost mankind's collective IQ" by developing an "infrastructure of improvement" to meet the demands of "exponentially increasing complexity and urgency." His far-out ideas, which he began to expound in the late 1950s, extend to nearly every aspect of human life. Technology is just one part of his broader vision.
The world's first computer mouse had a wood case. Click to enlarge. It was in the mid-1960s that Engelbart, then heading his own research laboratory, created the first computer mouse. It was one of several designs being considered for a screen selection device for computers. Engelbart had the idea, a colleague built the first one, and another worker in the lab gave it the name "mouse."
Engelbart never received royalties for the mouse, nor for the many other computer concepts that he and his team pioneered, including many of the basic ideas behind the operating system on your computer. Engelbart's lab developed a computer interface with windows and several kinds of hyperlinking capabilities, and his lab was the first to demonstrate video teleconferencing -- amazingly, all back in the 1960s. As one writer put it, "Engelbart specializes in being about twenty years ahead of his time and getting recognition long after he has despaired of anyone's understanding his innovative thinking."
Engelbart's lab changed hands several times, until it was finally shut down in 1989. That was his annus horribilis; also that year, his house burned down and he had a difficult battle with lymphoma. He survived, however, and founded an organization to promote his ideas. The computer-mouse company Logitech has given Engelbart free office space, as a way to express its gratitude to the under-appreciated inventor.
Related links:
Click here to read an official biography of Engelbart, with an emphasis on his ideas.
Click here to see more pictures of Engelbart and his work.
Click here for the homepage of the Bootstrap Alliance, an organization which propounds Engelbart's ideas.
| Biotechnology | Convergence | Creativity | Culture | E-conomics | Education |
| Equity | Gov't & Politics | Innovation | National Security | Personal Security |
For errors, broken links, questions or comments,
contact webmaster@tecsoc.org.
