The Doug Engelbart Archives 0

Overview 1

The Doug Engelbart Archive Collection documents the life's work of Doug Engelbart. This is an ongoing initiative of the Doug Engelbart Institute, a work in progress in collaboration with SRI International, Sun Labs, Internet Archive, New Media Consortium, and distinguished volunteers from Doug's alumni group, to preserve for historic interest, and to inform a next generation pursuit of his compelling strategic vision and significant prior work. The initial thrust of this Initiative is to gather, sift through, catalog, digitize, and upload archival documents, video footage, photos, and digital files for preservation and broad-based accessibility. We are currently working with 2,000+ digitized historic photos, 150+ digitized video tapes, plus dozens of digitized papers. This work complements the existing comprehensive collections at Stanford University Libraries Special Collections, and the Computer History Museum. 1a

You are looking at the portal page into the whole Doug Engelbart Archive Collection. Refer to the Table of Contents (left panel) to browse by media type, by institution curating special collections of the archives, or by stories about his vision, his pioneering firsts and special historic events. 1b

christina's screenshot from PDA2011

See Learnings from a Life’s Work: The Doug Engelbart Archives -- a 20-minute video tour by Christina Engelbart including highlights of Doug's work, an overview of this archive initiative, how his work informs next-generation information technology, and what that means to the archive community -- from her presentation at the Internet Archive's 2011 Personal Digital Archiving. To get a flavor of what it's like to piece together the context and stories hidden in the subtexts an archive collection, see Christina's March 2011 blog A Day in the Life of a Personal Archivist. 1b

Items in the Archives 2

Photos 2a

Videos 2b

  • 1968 Demo - our portal page to the "Mother of All Demos" video, links, retrospectives, and more
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  • Engelbart Videography - showcasing selected videos available to view online
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  • Engelbart Video Archive Collection - NEW! the Internet Archive now offers for online viewing an extensive video collection of Engelbart's lectures, demos, interviews, and TV appearances dating back to 1968
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Artifacts 2c

Image of the original mouse
  • The archives include the original computer mouse, later production mice, and various versions of the 5-key keyset -- an input device for entering commands and text with the left hand while your right hand is pointing and clicking with the mouse. In the "Revolution" Exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, you can see an authentic replica of the original mouse, along with a few early production mice and keysets. You can now tour the "Revolution" Exhibit online -- the section on The Mouse is in the Input & Output topic. In the main lobby at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, where Doug conducted his historic research, is a display case showcasing an authentic replica of the original mouse with some historic photos of Engelbart and a brass rendition of the US Patent on the mouse.
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Texts 2d

Slides 2e

Software 2f

  • We also maintain and continue to use a working version of NLS/Augment software on a Sun server, as well as various iterations of the Augment client software, including AugTerm and Visual AugTerm (VAT). Augment and AugTerm are also being preserved by the Software Preservation Projects.
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  • The HyperScope software, developed by the Doug Engelbart Institute in 2006 under an NSF grant to extend the standard browser with the precision browsing and viewing features first demonstrated in Augment/NLS, is documented at hyperscope.org
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Demos 2g

  • Watch Demos of the NLS/Augment software given by Doug Engelbart and members of his team dating back to 1968, including what is now known as the "Mother of All Demos."
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Projects 2h

Websites 2i

Press 2j

  • Press Clippings - comprehensive listing of press articles about Doug and his work dating back to the 1970s.
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Special Collections by Institution 3

Stories of Pioneering Firsts and Historic Events 4

The Story 4a

  • A Lifetime Pursuit - a short biographical story of Doug Engelbart's career, including his vision, inspiration, accomplishments, and strategic approach -- how and why he did it all.

  • A Bootstrap "Paradigm Map" - based on several decades of experience operationalizing Phase I of his strategic vision, Doug Engelbart issued a call to action for Phase II -- where we go from here.

Pioneering Firsts 4b

  • The Mouse - the story of how and why Doug Engelbart invented the mouse
  • The Keyset - the other input device; includes links to footage of Engelbart using it to quickly input commands while pointing and clicking with the mouse
  • Interactive computing - the dawn of interactive computing in a punch-card era
  • Hypermedia - pioneering the ability to link and cross-reference to any object or piece of information in any file
  • Groupware - pioneering video teleconferencing, meeting support, and other key provisions for online collaboration
  • Internet - the firsts transmission between two sites on the first distributed computer network -- the ARPANET -- and the first online communities
  • NLS/Augment - the computer system that integrated the above capabilities and many more, enabling high-performance knowledge work of individuals, teams and networks, including Doug's own team
  • Pioneering Firsts - a bulleted list of notable "firsts" pioneered by Doug and his team

Special Events 4c