Doug Engelbart was the first to actually build a computer that might seem familiar to us, today. He came to Silicon Valley after a stint in the Navy as a radar technician during World War II. Engelbart was, in his own estimation, a “naive drifter”, but something about the Valley inspired him to think big. Engelbart’s idea was that computers of the future should be optimized for human needs – communication and collaboration. Computers, he reasoned, should have keyboards and screens instead of punch cards and printouts. They should augment rather than replace the human intellect. And so he pulled a team together and built a working prototype: the oN^aEUR‘Line System. Unlike earlier efforts, the NLS wasn’t a military supercalculator. It was a general^aEUR‘purpose tool designed to help knowledge workers perform better and faster, and that was a controversial idea. Letting non-engineers interact directly with a computer was seen as harebrained, utopian – subversive, even. And then people saw the demo.
Engelbart is one of the greatest visionaries of this industry.
Engelbart is one of the greatest visionaries of this *era*.
FTFY
Notice how Engelbart *PREDATES* the Teletubzation of GUI Interface Design as advocated by people like Thom and the Gnome3 crowd.
Edited 2018-12-11 01:15 UTC
Show us on the doll where Thom and the Gnome3 crowd touched you.
That’s pretty funny, kwan_e.
I don’t understand why people hate on Gnome3 and Gnome shell. I think it’s pretty spiffy and my friends and family who have adopted Linux really like it.
For the shell specifically, it seems to me that it’s a lot of the same type of hate that the Windows 8 UI redesign got, it’s sufficiently different without providing tangible benefits up-front for most users that people just don’t like it.
For GNOME3 in general, I think at least part of it is the morass of dependencies it has (there’s no legitimate reason a DE should depend on a specific init system) and the resource efficiency problems (see for example requiring a full-fledged GPU driver to run smoothly, even Windows isn’t that bad).
Both are hampered though by the ‘our way is the only right way’ zealotry that many of the big GNOME developers seem to have. That mentality alienates people very quickly.
I think the main thing is it’s (been) slow. (And maybe for no apparent benefit.)
This perfectly explains the resistance to React.js in JS dev circles. It was very different from how we did things before, but the truth is, new developers picked it up more quickly and thoroughly than they did the previous tech (jQuery/Backbone.js) and it has thus rightfully taken over the industry.
Yes, funny …but still in bad taste. :/
NASA is a benefit to humanity.
actually the Telefunken “Rollkugel” was first – it’s upside down – more like a trackball – but still it was a few years earlier.
Then it’s not a mouse…
Well – the idea to turn it around and have a “real” mouse happened at Telefunken in the same year (68). It was even sold as a commercial product back than.
It^aEURTMs design – using a ball – is much closer to later computer mice as the nasa design (using two wheels).
I thought the trackball mouse was invented by Ralph Benjamin for the British Royal Navy in the 1940s?
Engelbart had already built prototypes by 1964. Telefunken may have been first to market but not necessarily have invented the mouse. The trackball dates back to the 1940s although kept secret.
To stick with the current example, Engelbart was trained by the US government in the single largest socialist institution in all of the history of the world – the US military. Government investment truly works magic.
I love these retellings of history from the people involved. I already knew the broad outlines of the story, but one can always learn something new. For instance, I wasn’t aware of the following:
Even the technological dead-ends showed a lot of creativity!
the Eidophor is a Swiss invention and not a Swedish …. and it was not “dead end” but used over three decades to project TV and video.
(just saying…)
Edited 2018-12-10 23:47 UTC
Continued usage doesn’t mean it’s not a technological dead end.
A “dead end” doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful or used for a long time.
There are a few moments like this that we should teach everyone. Making fire, forging metal, the wheel/car/plane/moonlanding, papyrus/paper/printing press/internet, phone/radio/tv/computer*, steam/combustion/electricity/nuclear.
* And in the computer part we shouldn’t only focus on hardware, but on this demo as indeed “the mother of all demo’s”.
Whoever wants to pitch this to discovery channel, good luck. I would prefer this to be taught during history at school though
Sputnik/Gagarin!
(Gagarin was allright
http://yurigagarin50.org/history/gagarin-in-britain/gagarin-in-manc…
“Although it was pouring with rain, Gagarin insisted the car hood remain back. Through his interpreter, he told the driver, “If all these people have turned out to welcome me and can stand in the rain, so can I”. Refusing an umbrella, he stood in the back of the open Bentley and smiled at the cheering crowds, including many schoolchildren, who shared his soaking to greet him.” )