Engelbart's Role in ARPANET History 0

Overview 2

Engelbart's work began in earnest in the early 1960s, with funding from ARPA* and the US Air Force to develop NLS. By 1968 his lab at SRI had a fully operational comprehensive web-based system (NLS). Around that time ARPA was gearing up its ARPANET initiative to make the large computational mainframe computer resources available remotely to the ARPA research community. Engelbart was thrilled about the potential for NLS to be accessed over the net to support communities of knowledge workers, and was given the funds to set up the ARPANET Network Information Center (NIC) to support the ARPANET community. He then set to work extending NLS for community support, including integrated hypertext email and an automated library facility (the "Journal"). By 1978 there were 5-6 mainframes running NLS to support a variety of user communities. 2A
* ARPA = Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a funding agency of the US Deptartment of Defense which was the major source of R&D funds for early computer research. 2A1

References 3

Following are references to the passages from Engelbart's papers in the late '60s and early '70s which highlight his lab's orientation for Network Implications prior to and during the formation of the ARPANET, all directly related to today's World Wide Web as well -- Knowledge Mangement, Collaboration, etc. 3A

• The 1968 paper they published in the FJCC Conference Proceedings has been somewhat masked by the publicity given to the online presentation they gave at the Conference, but it outlined in detail the hardware, software and functionality of the NLS system: 3B
  A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, Douglas C. Engelbart and William K. English, AFIPS Conference Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, CA, December 1968, Vol. 33, pp. 395-410. 3B1

• In 1970, Larry Roberts organized a small conference at University of Texas in Austin: The Interdisciplinary Conference on Multi-Access Computer Networks. Each solicited speaker was to address his relevant "Implications of Multi-Access Computer Networks." For instance, Larry's was "Economic Implications." Engelbart's was "Intellectual Implications." 3C
  Douglas C. Engelbart, Intellectual Implications of Multi-Access Computer Networks, Stanford Research Institute, 1970 (AUGMENT,5255,). From Proceedings of The Interdisciplinary Conference on Multi-Access Computer Networks, Austin, Texas, April 1970. 3C1

  See particularly topical sections relevant to the shape of today's emergent Web-based changes: 3C2

  Organisms and Organizations: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#2) 3C3

  Augmentation Systems: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#3) 3C4

  The Intellectual Workshop: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#4) 3C5

  Collaborative Dialog: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#5) 3C6

  Office-Sharing and Dialogue in the ARPA Network: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#6) 3C7

  The Knowledge Market: (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#7) 3C8

  Improved Nervous System for our "Social Organisms": (http://www.bootstrap.org/augment-5255.htm#8) 3C9