I'd never heard his name before. He also work on a number of other things with computing, that are mentioned in the article:

LOS ANGELES: Douglas Engelbart, who revolutionized computing by inventing the mouse, died in California on Tuesday at the age of 88, the institute bearing his name said Wednesday.

Born in Oregon, Engelbart studied electrical engineering and computer sciences in the 1950s before joining the Stanford Research Institute.

There, he and his team worked on a number of concepts that have entered the computer mainstream, such as email, video conferencing, hypertext links and ARPAnet, the precursor of the Internet.

But he is best remembered for the mouse, which in its original incarnation was a wood box with two metal wheels and was granted a patent in 1970.

He had publicly used it two years earlier during a video conference in San Francisco before some 1,000 people -- an event that became known as "the mother of all demos."

Engelbart had a total of 21 patents to his name. In 2000, he was presented with the National Medal of Technology, the tech industry's highest honor.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/tec ... 34012.html

What in the world would they have done with a mouse in 1970?

"Hey I've invented this thing. Will somebody please hurry and invent the desktop so that I can use it."

lol jim. May not have been in every home, but they were around. I'm sure he knew they were on the way and wanted a patent quickly!


Early computers took up the space of a room. Minicomputers generally fit into one or a few refrigerator sized racks. It was not until the 1970s when computers such as the HP 9800 series desktop computers were fully programmable computers that fit entirely on top of a desk. The very first large "programmable calculators/computers" (machines lacking keyboards for text input) were marketed in the second half of the 1960s, starting with Programma 101 (1965)[1] and HP 9100 (1968). More desktop models were introduced in 1971, leading to a model programmable in BASIC in 1972. They used a smaller version of a minicomputer design based on read-only memory (ROM) and had small one-line LED alphanumeric displays. They could draw computer graphics with a plotter. The Wang 2200 of 1973 led operating systems such as Mac (Macintosh) and Windows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_computer

Early computers took up the space of a room.

The computer my dad installed at the Montreal Stock Exchange (1960s) took up an entire floor of Place Victoria.
Today's standard PCs are oodles more powerful than that system was.

The evolution of technology has been extraordinary ~ when I first began working, we had IBM selectrics ~ we had a small word processing department that used mag cards ~ sometime in the mid-70s, we upgraded to Wang ~ and a few years later, upgraded again to IBM desktops ~ after that, our computer hardware was replaced every few years because it got a LOT of use ~

Equally or maybe even more extraordinary to me is the evolution of software ~ the programming capability is mind-boggling to me ~ I marvel at how the progression from "I wish I could ..." to "here you go" happens so [relatively] quickly ~ and the best computer advice I ever got was back in the early days of Wang, when our trainer said "try it, you won't break it" ~

Sooz

Back then you couldn't since you never got into the software. The user only had access to the user interface unless you watched exactly what the technician did to get behind the magic.
I did and as soon as he was gone I entered his really simple code and voila, I was in and could manipulate the code. I still remember the code in simple Basic I inserted to have priority access to our printer. No more waiting for the girls in bookkeeping to finish their print jobs.
Did I mention that I never changed that back when I left there? That workstation was forever king with printing.