Died Douglas Engelbart - the inventor of the computer mouse - Gazeta.pl

Douglas Engelbart, a photo with the NMC Summer Conference in 2009. (Photo by Larry Johnson [(CC) drljohnson / flickr.com])

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Douglas Engelbart was an engineer and an employee of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Mouse was not his only invention. The team at the Augmentation Research Center under the direction of developed concepts for computer-interface elements such as screens, windows and hypertext.

first mouse was not so much differ from the assumptions of the devices that we have today on the desks. It was a wooden box that was on the bottom two wheels measuring its position on the coordinate axes. Engelbart invented it in the sixties, and presented in 1968 at a conference in San Francisco. The term “mouse” because of the selected projecting behind “tail”. Another suggested name was “insect”.

photo Logitech

Apart from it, the one-hour presentation presented ideas that can help a person’s life – far ahead of its time. He stressed that his job is to “broaden the human intellect” and wants to invent a more intuitive ways to communicate with your computer.

my invention patented in 1970, but the mouse hit the market until 14 years later, along with Apple devices. Employers Engelbart did not realize the importance of the device – the company license sold for about $ 40,000. Unfortunately, the patent has already expired three years later, so the engineer has not earned his idea too much. It is often stressed that his ideas were undervalued and after 1976 fell into the oblivion. Only in 1997, he was awarded the Lemelson-MIT and fee for $ 500,000 – the highest in the world award for inventiveness and innovation. Then another Turing Award, and others.

inventor has also collaborated in creating ARAPANETU, ancestor of today’s solutions that drive the Internet.

Engelbart died at the age of 88, at his home in Atherton, in Silicon Valley. The cause was liver failure. His death was announced yesterday Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The source of news was the daughter, Christine.

[Reuters, Wikipedia]