The Mother of All Computer Demos, 1968 Edition

News came out yesterday that Douglas Engelbart had died at the age of 88. Engelbart was best known for developing the computer mouse, but these videos show he, and his team of engineers, were responsible for so much more - basically the entire concept of modern personal computers. These videos are from the legendary public demo Engelbart did on December 9, 1968 at the Stanford Research Institute. It has been called "The Mother of All Demos," and after watching them, I can see why. With one exception (the concept of windows, which Xerox did at PARC, and Apple commercially implemented later), the entire basis of modern computing is in this demo, in 1968.



Here's the mouse.



We take this for granted now, but in 1968 it would have been very trippy!



Collaboration, and at the end of this clip, video conferencing.

You have to remember that in 1968, computers were very crude. You interfaced with them using punch cards or other inconceivable media. So to show you typing in real time, re-arranging words, copying paragraphs, using a mouse, video conferencing, two users collaborating on the same screen, etc. etc. was light years ahead of what would be possible even 30 years later.

Wow.