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Take Some Time Today To Watch Doug Engelbart's Demo

from the you'll-be-glad-you-did dept

Tue, Dec 9th 2008 1:13pm — Mike Masnick

I have a presentation that I've done many times now for various corporate execs (usually from Europe) trying to understand just what makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley. It's a fun presentation, and always creates quite a discussion. It goes into a lot of different topic areas, but my favorite part is, right in the middle of my "abbreviated history" of Silicon Valley, when I get to show some clips from Doug Engelbart's 1968 demo of what he was working on at SRI. That demo was the first time the world saw an awful lot of things that are common today: from the mouse (and, yes, he talks about naming the mouse), to a graphical user interface, to hyperlinks, among many other things (including a few computer bugs). I just gave the presentation again two weeks ago, and I realized that we were quickly approaching the 40th anniversary of the demo, which took place on December 9th, 1968.

The entire presentation is 75 minutes long, but I've embedded it below. I'm sure many of you won't have time to watch all 75 minutes, but it's absolutely worth watching at least part of it (and then you'll want to keep watching):

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Filed Under: 40 years, doug engelbart, mice

5 Comments

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hegemon13, 9 Dec 2008 @ 2:24pm

Missed opportunity
He, or those that put him up to the demo, should have patented all those ideas. The world would be much better off if the idea of a mouse or a GUI were safely owned by one man.
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Karnage, 9 Dec 2008 @ 2:43pm

Copy/Paste
1968, reseacher shows copy and paste on a movie screen. 2007, copy/paste not on iPhone.
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Beihl Gates, 9 Dec 2008 @ 2:50pm

Who is this Enlebart imposter? Everyone knows it was I, the one and only computer inventor ever, who invented the mouse and GUI.
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Thomas Christensen, 10 Dec 2008 @ 6:07am

Also: Licklider
If you find this stuff interesting, you should also look into J.C.R Licklider who had a clear vision of modern computer usage and the internet in the early 60's (and went on to help create ARPA-net etc.). Lot of good quotes to be found.
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DMCA, 10 Dec 2008 @ 12:49pm

Vid no longer available
Thank you DMCA (most likely, I don't know the whole story)
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