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A Yahoo! search on "inventor of computer mouse" took us right where we wanted to go -- to a site about Douglas Engelbart and his unfinished revolution. We couldn't have done it in a couple of clicks without Englebart's innovative input device, which celebrated its thirtieth birthday in 1998. The site is an archived companion to a 1998 symposium in honor of Engelbart and his contributions to computing. At the symposium, Engelbard presented his "Mother of All Demos," which introduced a two-way interactive system called NLS (for oN Line System) that featured "a graphical user interface, display editing and integrated text and graphics,
hyper-documents, and two-way video-conferencing with shared workspaces," as well as a mouse. The event had a huge influence on the next generation of computer designers and shaped the graphical desktop interface of personal computers created by Apple and others later in the seventies. We headed back to the Yahoo! category that produced the search results, Computers and Internet > People > Engelbart, Douglas, and were able to find other sites about the man and his visionary research. At the MouseSite, a Stanford University resource on the history of human computer
interaction, we found abundant photos of early mice, input device prototypes, and the folks who built them, including Engelbart. Elsewhere, we listened to Engelbart discuss his 1968 demo. Now in his seventies, Englebart is still driven and idealistic, still exploring technological ideas to improve the way we work and live. A profile at Silicon Valley.com includes many current photos of this man who has revolutionized the way we interact with our computers.
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