The Dawn of Interactive Computing

Engelbart's whole vision for augmenting the human intellect since the 1950s assumed that people would be able to interact with computers through a display monitor into their information space. This was at a time when computers were used for complex mathematical and scientific functions, and you would load in your instructions, and come back later for the results.

"Doug Engelbart's presentation at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, was a live online hypermedia demonstration of the pioneering work that Engelbart's group had been doing at SRI. Later called "The Mother of All Demos" by Andy van Dam, this historic demonstration paved the way for human-computer interaction." read more
– Source: Douglas Engelbart and the Mother of All Demos, Brown University

Ivan Sutherland is actually the father of interactive computing for his work on Sketchpad, the interactive display graphics program he developed in 1963. He was soon after, in his position at the ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office under the direction of J.C.R. Licklider, facilitating ARPA's research grant to Engelbart for developing the NLS system at SRI based on his visionary manifesto published in a 1962 Report, in which Engelbart envisioned interactive computing as a vehicle for human interaction with computers, with each other, and with their knowledge, all in a vast virtual information space. In a 1965 Report he published his early experiments with pointing devices, including the mouse, for composing and editing on interactive display workstations. Engelbart's work on interactive computing at SRI migrated directly to Xerox PARC, from there to Apple, and out into the mainstream. Thus the tree of evolution for interactive computing generally traces back to Engelbart's lab at SRI.

In December 2008, on the 40th anniversary of his 1968 demo, SRI sponsored the public commemorative event Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing in his honor.

See Also

From the Internet

• Douglas Engelbart: Father Of Interactivity, By Timothy Long, ChannelWEB 2001
• Douglas Engelbart - Father of more than just the mouse, by Mark Aufflick, 2006

From Doug's Lab

• "The Mother of All Demos" (90 min Video/Film) Doug's 1968 debut of NLS (Augment's precursor) including hypermedia, the mouse, collaborative work, interactive computing, human computer interface, and overarching guiding principles.
• Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Douglas C. Engelbart. 1962. See for example how he envisioned an architect might work interactively with a computer in the Introduction's summary of Section IV.
• Doug Engelbart - A Lifetime Pursuit, a short biographical sketch by Christina Engelbart (5 pages).