Computer mouse inventor dies at 88
Source: Agencies |
July 5, 2013, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE first computer mouse was a wooden shell with metal wheels. The man behind it, tech visionary Doug Engelbart, has died at 88 after transforming the way people work, play and communicate.
He died of acute kidney failure at his California home on Tuesday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
The mild-mannered Engelbart had audacious ideas. Long before Apple founder Steve Jobs became famous for his dramatic presentations, Engelbart dazzled the industry at a San Francisco computer conference in 1968.
Working from his house with a homemade modem, he used his lab's elaborate new online system to illustrate his ideas to the audience, while his staff linked in from the lab. It was the first public demonstration of the mouse and video teleconferencing, and it prompted a standing ovation.
"We will miss his genius, warmth and charm," said Curtis R. Carlson, the CEO of SRI International where Engelbart used to work. "Doug's legacy is immense. Anyone in the world who uses a mouse or enjoys the productive benefits of a personal computer is indebted to him."
Back in the 1950s and '60s, when mainframe computers took up entire rooms and were fed data on punch cards, Engelbart already was envisioning a day when computers were far more intuitive to use.
One of the biggest advances was the mouse, which he developed in the 1960s. The idea was way ahead of its time. The mouse didn't become commercially available until 1984, with the release of Apple's then-revolutionary Macintosh computer.
Engelbart conceived the mouse so early in the evolution of computers that he and his colleagues didn't profit much from it. The technology passed into the public domain in 1987, preventing him from collecting royalties on the mouse when it was in its widest use. At least 1 billion have been sold since the mid-1980s.
Now, their usage is waning as people merely swipe their finger across a display screen.
Among Engelbart's other key developments in computing was the use of multiple windows. His lab also helped develop ARPANet, the government research network that led to the Internet.
He died of acute kidney failure at his California home on Tuesday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
The mild-mannered Engelbart had audacious ideas. Long before Apple founder Steve Jobs became famous for his dramatic presentations, Engelbart dazzled the industry at a San Francisco computer conference in 1968.
Working from his house with a homemade modem, he used his lab's elaborate new online system to illustrate his ideas to the audience, while his staff linked in from the lab. It was the first public demonstration of the mouse and video teleconferencing, and it prompted a standing ovation.
"We will miss his genius, warmth and charm," said Curtis R. Carlson, the CEO of SRI International where Engelbart used to work. "Doug's legacy is immense. Anyone in the world who uses a mouse or enjoys the productive benefits of a personal computer is indebted to him."
Back in the 1950s and '60s, when mainframe computers took up entire rooms and were fed data on punch cards, Engelbart already was envisioning a day when computers were far more intuitive to use.
One of the biggest advances was the mouse, which he developed in the 1960s. The idea was way ahead of its time. The mouse didn't become commercially available until 1984, with the release of Apple's then-revolutionary Macintosh computer.
Engelbart conceived the mouse so early in the evolution of computers that he and his colleagues didn't profit much from it. The technology passed into the public domain in 1987, preventing him from collecting royalties on the mouse when it was in its widest use. At least 1 billion have been sold since the mid-1980s.
Now, their usage is waning as people merely swipe their finger across a display screen.
Among Engelbart's other key developments in computing was the use of multiple windows. His lab also helped develop ARPANet, the government research network that led to the Internet.
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