Innovation Monitor — Inventor Edition: Douglas Engelbart and interactive computing
Innovation Monitor — Inventor Edition: Douglas Engelbart and interactive computing
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Welcome to this week’s Innovation Monitor.
We recently crossed 100 editions threshold of this NYC Media Lab Innovation Monitor newsletter. We’ve covered a variety of current-day topics ranging from mRNA vaccines to the TikTok algorithm to femtech innovations. But at the end of every newsletter, we go back in time a bit with the This Week in Business History fact. We’ve received feedback on how people love scrolling to the end to read them, so we’re trying something new: a series on the people and stories behind tech innovations that shaped our experience and understanding of the world.
When was the last time you consciously considered the ‘click’ and ‘drag’ and ‘drop’ functions? What’s the story behind this invention that is so foundational our modern graphical user interface?
Contrary to popular belief, Apple didn’t invent the computer mouse. In fact, on April 27th, 1981, the first commercial computer mouse accompanied the Xerox 8010 Star Information System computer. The machine was a heavy-duty business offering, and the mouse alone cost $400 to build. However, following a 1979 visit to Xerox, the Apple team quietly developed a newly designed mainstream mouse at a fraction of the cost.
In this week’s edition we’ll meet Douglas Engelbart. We’ll follow his journey as a pioneer in creating the computer mouse, and also, as some of our readers may know, the person behind the oft cited ‘Mother of All Demos’ moment in tech history. And stay tuned for next week, when we introduce Ada Lovelace and the story of the first published algorithm.
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Erica Matsumoto The Inventor Let’s meet Douglas Engelbart. After getting a doctorate from UC Berkley in 1955, Engelbart was as an assistant professor before joining the famous Stanford Research Institute.
What is important to note is how Engelbart thought about computing. His inspiration for his work on the precursor of the modern internet, ARPANET, partly came from the 1945 essay from The Atlantic, “As We May Think”: “Consider a future device for individual use which is a sort of mechanized private file and library… [and can be used as] an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”
If you have some time this weekend, I highly recommend the long read offered free from The Atlantic’s archives. It was written by Vannevar Bush, an American inventor who headed the Office of Scientific R&D for the US during WWII, and is a fascinating look at how leading minds thought about computing at the time.
For Englebert, the idea that a theoretical machine could be a natural extension of the brain’s indexing system was especially intriguing. In 1963, SRI helped fund Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center, where the inventor worked on devices for inputting, manipulating, and displaying data, including muti-windows displays and hyperlinks. Englebart’s work was foundational to the joysticks, light pens, and trackballs we use today. And, of course, the mouse.
Engelbart’s prototype mouse was built in 1964 and had a wood casing and a single button. The patent, awarded in 1970, described it as an “X-Y position indicator for a display system.”
The idea first came to Engelbart in 1961, while he was sitting at a conference session on computer graphics: “It occurred to him that, using a pair of small wheels traversing a tabletop, one wheel turning horizontally, one turning vertically, the computer could track their combined rotations and move the cursor on the display accordingly.”
Early prototypes of the mouse were very, very different, at least because we’ve been accustomed to our hand-held mice for the past forty years. They included a foot pedal, a “gyro-style Grafacon,” and even a knee-operated alternative!
The Mother of All Demos Steve Jobs (who we’ll connect to the history of the mouse at the end of this newsletter) was famous for his ability to bring flair and energy to demoing new technology products. The first prominent public appearance for the mouse was at 1968 presentation by Engelbart that came to be known as the “Mother of All Demos”.
Take a few minutes to look at the black-and-white footage, presented with surprising clarity. Not only did Engelbart present the mouse, but he also helped guide the watcher into a future of interactive personal computing that, up to that time, still felt hugely theoretical.
The high praise of “Mother All Demos” came from the journalist Steven Levy, who described the event as, “a calming voice from Mission Control as the truly final frontier whizzed before their eyes. It was the mother of all demos.”
Meanwhile, Engelbart’s mouse found its way from SRI to Xerox PARC. The device wouldn’t surface into the public’s view for at least a decade. In a 1982 InfoWorld article, people were still confusing it for the animal.
That changed after Steve Jobs and his team visit PARC and decided to use the tech for the Apple Lisa (1983), and more notably, the Apple Macintosh (1984). We’ll leave it to a cheesy clip from TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) to tell that story.
For a more comprehensive and personal story of the mouse’s origin, we recommend Computer History Museum’s interview with Engelbart and Bill English. The moderator — NY Time’s John Markoff — does a great job interviewing the two computer legends.
The invention of the mouse was less about a handheld device and more about the way a great inventor envisioned a future of interactive computing. Douglas Engelbart strongly believed in a future where machines helped humans be better — why he called his lab the Augmentation Research Center.
As our interfaces to computers have continued to evolve — from the mouse, to multi-gesture trackpads, to extended reality (XR) navigation — take a moment to remember how The Mother of All Demos helped usher in this age of interactivity into the way we experience computers.
This Week in the Future
As this week’s entire newsletter is about the past, we’re flipping this last section for the future to highlight one news item and one website to check out.
First, check out this NY Times article, “The World Knows Her as ‘Disaster Girl.’ She Just Made $500,000 Off the Meme.” It’s the perfect combination of NFTs, internet culture, and virality that shows a technology future that’s complex, creative, and in the making!
Also, the NYC Media Lab is hosting a panel on “Can NFTs Fund the Future for Artists” on May 13th. We’re asking what the future of NFTs means for ownership, creativity, and legacy with artists, innovators, and creators. Sign up here!
Finally, this newsletter has previously covered how new technologies are more easily enabling the creation of virtual beings. I just came across a very easy-to-use, browser-based Face Generator that allows you to quickly “create a unique person with your parameters in one click.”
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