Douglas Engelbart
Doug Engelbart was a technology innovator who has been called the single most important person in the history of computing.[1]
Engelbart's core research in human-computer interaction was about improving a human's ability to solve intellectual problems in a domain where a man could use intuitive human reasoning capability in conjunction with technology.[2]
In 1959, Engelbart preceded Moore's Law in a paper titled Microelectronics And The Art Of Similitude.
Engelbart was forward thinking in his approach to computers, and realized that human attitudes themselves would have to change in order to fully exploit the resource of computing. Engelbart was an electrical engineer, not a theoretician, so approached the field of computing from a very direct "hands-on" approach, which informed all of his research and the entire unfolding of the computer industry after. His engineering experience allowed him to understand the strengths of digital computers, and realize that human attitudes towards ease of information processing (expecting simple lines of text, or answers to questions) could change to make better use of the technology.[3]
Engelbart did foundational research into modern computing largely using government research contracts.
Engelbart was a radar engineer, and was one of the first in the 1950s to understand computers as machines that could be connected to a radar screen in a general purpose manner, using the screen for general purpose information.[3]
Doug and his research team invented computer time sharing, network computing, graphical computing, the graphical user interface, and hypertext links.
Doug Engelbart and his team created the computer mouse and the On-Line System. The concept of the mouse was first developed by flipping a trackball upside down. The first trackballs had been developed in the 1940s.
Engelbart's work suggested that computers should be a part of everyone's office and help the everyday person do his work, rather than just gigantic number-crunchers.
In the public showing of the on-line system, Engelbart spoke about how his goal was to get on the steepest ascent in exploration, in other words, the newest, most exciting, yet least understood principles and technology, which Engelbart implied would net the greatest return to humanity, which is why he spent time exploring advanced computer systems in the 1960s.[4]
Engelbart passed away in 2013.
Before SRI[edit]
Doug Engelbart had gotten a teaching job at Berkeley. After that, he landed a job at Hewlett Packard, but the same day, quit, because HP was not working on digital computers at the time, which was his main interest.[3]
Moore's law[edit]
Gordon Moore was a member of SRI's board and at one point mentioned that Doug's papers such as Microelectronics And The Art Of Similitude had brought to him the notion of how integrated circuits would scale to become more compact, efficient, and computationally powerful. This notion was later known as Moore's law.
Augmenting human intellect paper[edit]
In about 1962, Engelbart wrote about what is now called computer-aided design (CAD): "Let us consider an augmented architect at work. He sits at a working station that has a visual display screen some three feet on a side; He is designing a building. He has already dreamed up several basic layouts and structural forms, and is trying them out on the screen. The surveying data for the layout he is working on now have already been entered, and he has just coaxed the clerk to show him a perspective view of the steep hillside building site with the roadway above, symbolic representations of the various trees that are to remain on the lot, and the service tie points for the different utilities."[5]
References[edit]
- ↑ "The Machine that Changed the World - Episode 3 - The Paperback Computer". 2024-03-06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7DKVfOXr54.
- ↑ Engelbart, D. C. (2016-10-23). "Argmenting Human Intelellect: A Conceptual Framework : D. C. Engelbart : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive". https://archive.org/details/argmentinghumani00dcen/page/n13/mode/2up.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cringely, Robert X. (2005-12-09). "NerdTV Ep 11". https://archive.org/details/nerdtv011.
- ↑ "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, Douglas C. Engelbart, San Francisco, Dec 9, 1968". 2024-03-06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1591&v=4iAJNBVG-yU&feature=youtu.be.
- ↑ Engelbart, Christina; Institute, Doug Engelbart (2001-08-29). "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework". https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138/.
- "'What the Dormouse Said'". 1968-12-09. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/06.01.05/dormouse-0522.html.
- "The Augmentation of Douglas Engelbart at 15:00". 2024-03-06. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7ZtISeGyCY.
- "Microelectronics and the art of similitude". 2003-01-06. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1157297.
- "Finding Aid for the Douglas C. Engelbart Papers". 1961-08-28. https://dougengelbart.org/mousesite/EngelbartPapers/FindingAid.html.
- Cringely, Robert X. (2013-07-03). "Doug Engelbart, visionary". https://www.cringely.com/2013/07/03/doug-engelbart-visionary/.