Doug's 1968 Demo
DETAILED ONSCREEN OUTLINE 0

[Following is the full text of the outline materials used by Doug Engelbart during his 1968 "Mother of All Demos". The onscreen material was originally all uppercase and formatted to fit on the screen in large type to be used as slides during the presentation. For the most part that material is transcribed ver batem below, as free text rather than slide format, with this Editor's notes encased in square brackets throughout. Certain key screenshots were captured to include below as Figures 1-5.]

INTRODUCTION 1

TITLE SLIDE


A RESEARCH CENTER

FOR

AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT

BY

DOUGLAS C. ENGELBART AND
WILLIAM K. ENGLISH

DECEMBER 8, 1968


PREFACE


PRODUCED AT

STANFORD RESEARCH INSTITUTE

MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA

UNDER THE JOINT SPONSORSHIP OF:

The Advanced Research Projects Agency,
The National Aeornautics and Space Agency, and
The Rome Air Development Center (Air Force)

 



~ ~ ~ ~

This movie captures directly a technical session presentation made at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, on December 8, 1968.

The movie screen will show what was projected by a high-powered TV projector onto a 22'x18' screen mounted at the front of the 2000-chair convention center arena, and the sound track will reproduce what came over the loudspeakers.

~ ~ ~ ~

On the stage, below and to the audience's right of the screen, was seated the main speaker (Doug Engelbart) at the controls of an on-line computer-display work station whose display output was projected on the screen (and simultaneously captured on film).

~ ~ ~ ~

Behind the scenes, Bill Engelish coordinated the supporting crew who manned camers, switches, mixers, special-effects controllers, etc.
You will notice that all performers wore headsets to couple them into the intercom network that included a total of six key people located both in San Francisco and at the home laboratory in Menlo Park.

~ ~ ~ ~

The capturing on film of the audio and video was a process subsidiary to the presentation, and the latter was not stopped for the two times when the move-camera operator had to load fresh film -- consequently, there are noticeable gaps between reels (of the order of a minute)

Signals from auxilliary television cameras were sometimes switched to the projector -- the opening scene is from such a camera, showing Engelbart's face view, just after he was introduced.

~ ~ ~ ~

DOUG'S INTRODUCTION

[NLS editing, viewspecs, hypermedia [see Figure 1], general features...]


Figure 1. Hypermedia example of route from work to home, labels hotlinked

 

OVERALL ABOUT THE PROGRAM 2

This presentation is devoted to the AHIRC (Augented Human Intellect Research Center)

  • Located within Stanford Research Institute
    Menlo Park, Calif.
    • as an explicit organizational entity, at the "Group" level
    • but it is not the only man-computer work going on at SRI

    ~ ~ ~ ~
  • Involving about 17 people
    together with special laboratory facilities:

    • ~ ~ ~ ~
  • Sponsored by government agencies:
    • Currently: ARPA, NASA, and RADC
    • Also, in the past AFOSR and ESD

    ~ ~ ~ ~
  • A goal-oriented pursuit for many years [see Figure 2]


    Figure 2. Number of Years since 1950, Number of People involved

    ~ ~ ~ ~
  • Pursuing these goals:
    1. Improve the effectiveness with which individuals and organizations work at intellectual tasks.
      • better solutions
      • faster solutions
      • more complex problems, with
      • better use of human capabilities
    2. Develop a system-oriented discipline for designing the means by which greater effectiveness is achieved.

    ~ ~ ~ ~
  • Following the general approach:
    • EMPIRICAL: build and try
    • EVOLUTIONARY: steepest ascent in exploration
    • WHOLE-SYSTEM: real environment, complete bag, many candidates for redesign
    • BOOTSTRAPPING: the specific experimental system (being built, tried, and evolved) is for the real-life use of the system development team doing the exploration work.

    ~ ~ ~ ~

NLS AS AN "INSTRUMENT" 3

NLS is: [see Figure 3]

  An instrument/vehicle for
  helping humans to operate (compose, modify, study (navigate, move about))
    within the domain of
            complex information structures

CONTROL TECHNIQUES 4

Control Devices

  • [overhead shot of console with mouse, keyboard, keyset]
  • [Initiates shared-screen video teleconference with Don Andrews]

Control Dialogue

  • [using repertoire of command verbs and nouns e.g. typing "ic" gives feedback Insert Character, "dw" gives Delete Word, single-stroke viewspecs, using both hands to coordinate]

Control Metalanguage

  • [covered later by Jeff Rulifson under Software Design]

NLS IMPLEMENTATION 5

Hardware Design

  • Workstation Controller [see Figure 4]
  • Display System [camera in Menlo Park shows display system hardware]

Software Design

  • Program Structure [see Figure 5]
  • [Jeff Rulifson demonstrates software environment, code, structure, cross-linking, navigating, bug reports, etc]


Figure 4. NLS Hardware diagram


Figure 5. NLS Software Program Structure

~ ~ ~ ~

USAGE 6

Applications Examples

  • User Documentation
  • Paper Studying
  • Printout Directives
  • Joint File Usage
  • Open House Duty Roster
  • Hardware Design Documentation
  • System Analysis Records

Two-Person Collaboration

  • [Initiates shared-screen video teleconference with Bill Paxton]

Information Retrieval

  • [Bill Paxton demonstrates various forms of information retrieval]
  • "Hot" Retrieval -- known destination
  • "Cold" Retrieval -- unknown destination

ACTIVITIES 7

Service System Development

User System Development

Management System

ARPA Network [coming soon]

Network Information Center [coming soon]

Our "Product"

    • A sample Augmentation System
    • An Augmentation System for augmenting computer-system development
    • Design principles for developing Augmentation Systems

CREDITS 8

AHI Supporting Staff

    • Bill English - design of audio-video show setup, stage managing the show
      [special mention for pulling this all together]
    • Ed van de Riet, Martin Hardy, Roger Bates, John Yarborough, Steve Paavola
    • Dave Evans - event coordination and open house management
    • Don Andrews, Jeff Rulifson, Bill Paxton - preparation and presentation

Others Giving Support

    • SRI -- general preparation support
    • Stewart Brand, Portola Institute, consultation, camera, assistant stage
    • John Dusterberry, Ames Research Lab, NACA
      (loan of Eidophor projector)
    • Eugene Warren, T&T Communications, Inc
      (Eidophor tuneup and technical backup)
    • Tasker Instrument Co.
      (concentrated effort on the display-generation equipment)
      [and telephone company helped tremendously]
    • Herman Miller Research Co.
      [special mention for their extra effort in designing and producing the control and display console in time for the show, and for their ongoing collaboration]
    • [Special thanks again to the team of 17 noted above]
    • [Special thanks and dedication of this whole presentation to Doug's wife and daughters]




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