Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of Computer Mouse, Has Died

[Hissyspit]

Source: CBS News

Inventor of computer mouse dies at age of 88
July 03, 2013

Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse and developer of early incarnations of email, word processing programs and the Internet, has died at the age of 88.

The Computer History Museum, where Engelbart had been a fellow since 2005, says he died early Wednesday. The museum in Mountain View, Calif., was notified of the death in an email from his daughter, Christina. The cause of death wasn't immediately known.

Engelbart's biggest breakthrough was the computer mouse, which he developed in the 1960s and patented in 1970. At the time, it was a wooden shell covering two metal wheels.

The notion of operating the inside of a computer with a tool on the outside was ahead of its time. The mouse wasn't commercially available until 1984, with Apple's new Macintosh.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57592224/inventor-of-computer-mouse-dies-at-age-of-88

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Englebart significant for many other innovations, bisions, advances in digital revolution, not just mouse.

Wikipedia: "Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 - July 2, 2013[3][4]) was an American inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human/computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse,[5] and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces.

Engelbart was a committed, vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and computer networks to help cope with the world’s increasingly urgent and complex problems.[6] Engelbart embedded a set of organizing principles in his lab, which he termed "bootstrapping strategy". He designed the strategy to accelerate the rate of innovation of his lab."

Englebart demonstrates the mouse, from the famous 1968 "Mother of all Demos:"

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. I was just about to post.

Here's another link, one of many that will appear.

Douglas Engelbart, Computer Mouse Creator, Visionary, Dies at 88
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-03/douglas-engelbart-computer-mouse-creator-visionary-dies-at-88.html

Historic Demo

On Dec. 9, 1968, at a computer conference in San Francisco, Engelbart unveiled his team’s work in a presentation that became known in tech circles as “the mother of all demos.” During the 90-minute session, linked to his lab by a homemade modem, Engelbart showed off then-novel feats including interactive computing, video conferencing, windows display and hypertext -- plus the rectangular, three-button controller he used to control the cursor on the screen.

[Jessy169]

2. May the Mouse be with you

I can see Mr. Englebart standing at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter scrolling through the list of accepted newbies using the mouse wheel.

Seriously, what a great contribution to mankind. 88 years -- that is a full life. May he rest in peace.

[eggplant]

3. We all owe him a huge debt.

He had a hand in nearly everything that is part of modern computing, a half century ago.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. We're losing them one by one ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3838845.stm

[RILib]

5. Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor

Without them there would have been no Mac, and Jobs, that ripoff artist, never acknowledged their work.

[TM99]

8. Yeah, add to those two men

Dennis Ritchie, inventor of C and co-founder of Unix, and Job's Nextstep & OS X would never have occurred.

Standing on the shoulders of giants is what this industry is about and not giving credit where credit is due is all too common today....sadly.

All are missed.

[L0oniX]

6. RIP mouse man.

[underpants]

7. Amazing - from the NY Times obit ---1968 presentation “the mother of all demos.”

For the event he sat on stage in front of a mouse, a keyboard and other controls and projected the computer display on a 22-foot-high video screen behind him. In little more than an hour he showed how a networked, interactive computing system would allow information to be shared rapidly among collaborating scientists. He demonstrated how a mouse, which he had invented just four years earlier, could be used to control a computer. He demonstrated text editing, video conferencing, hypertext and windowing.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/technology/douglas-c-engelbart-inventor-of-the-computer-mouse-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. Who will mourn the inventor of the "pointing stick rubber nub thingie"?

[kentauros]

10. Dunno.

I'm more concerned with continued health of whomever invented the graphics tablet, as it's far more useful as a computer's pointing device than anything ever invented for that task:

[Arkana]

11. No one, because its inventor was clearly Satan.