byteblog

Funny to think that it’s been 40 years since someone (Doug Engelbart) came up with the idea for the first computer mouse.

Made of wood, and with one button, it shook up the traditional ideas of computing and redefined how people should interact and use computers – they should help us.

Many of the things we take for granted today, and perhaps thought had only been around since the 80s and the first usable PC-based word processors, were demonstrated at that show in California in 1968. Copying, pasting and clipping text files and hyperlinking  - all things previously unheard of, were unveiled by Engelbart and the team behind NLS, the name of the system to put the ideas into practice.

What is perhaps most significant about the event was that NLS was adopted by the Stanford Research Institute who, together with UCLA, formed one of the two ends of the first link in the Arpanet network – what we now call the Internet. 

I think we should all raise a glass to Mr Engelbart today.

Read more at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768481.stm