Doug Engelbart, inventor of the mouse, died at age 88 - ZDNet

Technology: objectively Praised for its many contributions to the computer, the inventor of the mouse has always had a complex relationship to Silicon Valley

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demonstration site of the mouse by Douglas Engelbart, leased reason as one of the important characters in the personal computer will probably be more visits in a few days than in recent years. The videos presented by Stanford University show the engineer in 1968, using for the first time in public his invention coupled to an operating system GUI.

More than 40 years later, we can only wonder once again the length of the show (the full video is at the bottom of page on the university website): 100 minutes to show an object as mundane or exceeded the mouse. But seen in the context of the time, we understand the interest of the video documentary.

Legend of dormant mice

Developed in 1963, the mouse was in its infancy in a wooden hull and two metal wheels, to indicate lateral movement or back and forth. Note that the ball, used long after this first prototype two-wheel until the arrival of the optical mouse pointer, was invented independently several years before by three researchers working for the Canadian government.

This ball was used in the first mouse in the world sold by the German company Telefunken, a few weeks before Engelbart demonstrated. This does not preclude Engelbart be considered the inventor of the mouse, thanks to his work on the position of the pointer based on the X and Y coordinates, and its demonstration in 1968 to be named the “mother of all demos. “

Despite clear that innovation today is the mouse, it was later used at the time. The first computer to integrate default is the Xerox Alto, which combined mouse and keyboard input devices … its commercialization in 1973.

It was therefore

decade Engelbart began his work on the mouse. And the device has he begun to emerge from the shadows in the 1980s with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System and the Macintosh 128K and Lina Mouse. Finally recognition for the invention of Engelbart

Not sure because the researcher has never held the patent rights of the mouse. This is the Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International, which owned the intellectual property. No royalties, so … And there would have been no. Because in all cases, the patent had expired in 1987, a time when the use of the mouse was not yet solid.

where the legend of a revolution that would have slept in boxes of Xerox PARC for many years to upset the computer to the point that we can not enjoy today, with hindsight .

This anecdote illustrates the ambiguous relationship with Engelbart’s Silicon Valley. If one of the first to have made a giant demonstration and recorded by cameras in San Francisco – an exercise now practiced by all major IT companies -. Has not always been recognized by his peers

Born in 1925, Doug Engelbart studied electrical engineering at the State University of Oregon, United States. Communications technician during World War II and electrical technician at NACA (the forerunner of NASA), it will soon end up back on the benches of the University, Berkeley (California), to spend engineering degree and PhD.

It was only after 1955 that integrate, Ph.D. in hand, the research laboratory at Stanford. His laboratory was the source of a number of technologies, some of which integrated the “mother of all demos” in 1968:. The virtual office, video conferencing, e-mail or hyperlinks

Forgetting progressive

Due to disagreements in his laboratory, he falls a bit into oblivion in 1976. Our colleague Tom Foremski on ZDNet.com says well enough Engelbar troubled public life: “Despite all the accolades and testimonials of his genius, Silicon Valley has largely ignored his work and he has spent years trying to finance ideas, and even to be heard by someone. “

Ingratitude of Silicon Valley? “I sometimes feel that my work in the past 20 years has been a failure,” confessed Doug Engelbart in 2005 the author of the blog. “I have not been able to find funding and to engage in dialogue with anyone.”

direct consequence computers have spent decades to reinvent what has already been demonstrated in 1968, when judging the researcher. “We had personal workstations that send messages over a network, we could share a remote screen, we email, we had spreadsheets, text editors, applications.”

But his investment applications at SRI, all remain dead letters, leading him to resign in 1986. He created in 1988 Doug Engelbart Institute, animating seminars until the 2000s.

For him, the computer revolution has remained incomplete. Silicon Valley will probably quickly to something else, the next tribute given to the next pioneer deceased judge with a hint of bitterness Tom Foremski. It remains to him the story of the mouse, personal computer, an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1992 and a Turing award in 1997.