/* ---- Google Analytics Code Below */

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Mother of All Demos reprise

Those with interest in the history of modern computing know this event well. The 'Mother of all demos', done by Douglas Engelbart in 1968.   He drove home in a single demo what might be done with computers, without the user knowing any computer language.  Quite a new idea then.  Later we met and worked with Engelbart.  His later ideas dealt with collaborative, augmented problem solving.  Still a useful idea.
See also:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart  

Watch this amazing demo of the early desktop computer
In 1968, computers got personal: How the “mother of all demos” changed the world.

By Margaret O'Hara in FastCompany

On a crisp California afternoon in early December 1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to blow everyone’s mind about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how the devices they built could be utterly different kinds of machines–ones that were “alive for you all day,” as he put it, immediately responsive to your input, and which didn’t require users to know programming languages in order to operate.


Engelbart typed simple commands. He edited a grocery list. As he worked, he skipped the computer cursor across the screen using a strange wooden box that fit snugly under his palm. With small wheels underneath and a cord dangling from its rear, Engelbart dubbed it a “mouse.” .... "

No comments: