Douglas Engelbart

From IAE-Pedia

Contents 1 Early History 2 Stanford Research Institute 3 After SRI 4 Bootstrap Institute 5 Awards and Patents 6 Video 7 Comment by David Moursund 1/14/09 8 References 9 Author

"Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design.... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction." (Douglas Engelbart, 1970.)

“Boosting mankind's collective capability for coping with complex, urgent problems on a global scale ... that's been my pursuit all these years!" (Douglas Engelbart.)

Douglas Engelbart is best known for his work in human-computer interaction. In this field, he invented the mouse and worked in areas such as hypertext and computer networks. His careen has been dedicated to improving the collective IQ (the collective capabilities) of humans to represent and solve hard problems that face the world.

Early History

Douglas Engelbart is an American computer scientist and inventor born January 30, 1925 in Portland, Oregon. He was a radar technician 1944–1946 in the navy. His first bachelor's degree (1948) was in Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University. He then worked for three years as an engineer at Ames Laboratory. Quoting from a 1986 interview:

I was recruited as an electrical engineer in a section they called the electrical section. It was a service and support group that helped develop the specifications. If they were making a new wind tunnel for the motors and needed control systems, or a paging system, we would install and maintain that. If somebody wanted some special electronics built that wasn't instrumentation, we would build that. So it was a mixture of maintenance and building, and definitely a service thing. It was an interesting education, but again, it's not what somebody with a burning ambition to be a creator of something, or at least, anybody who understood how the world worked, would choose to do.

Engelbart earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree (1952) and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1955) from the University of California, Berkley.

While at Berkley, Engelbart worked on the California Digital Computer project that was building an electronic digital computer. He also worked at Stanford Research Institute.

Stanford Research Institute

After earning his doctorate, Engelbart was an assistant professor in Electrical Engineering for a year at the University of California, Berkley. In 1957 he began work at the Stanford Research Institute. There, (in 1959) he founded and directed a lab named the Augmentation Research Center.

Quoting fropm the Wikipedia:

At SRI International, Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the On-Line System, or NLS. He and his team at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC, the lab he founded at SRI) developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, groupware, hypertext and precursors to the graphical user interface. He conceived and developed many of his user interface ideas back in the mid-1960s, long before the personal computer revolution, at a time when most individuals were kept away from computers, and could only use computers through intermediaries [batch processing], and when software tended to be written for vertical applications in proprietary systems.

In 1967, Engelbart applied for, and in 1970 he received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse U.S. Patent 3,541,541 ), describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the "mouse" because the tail came out the end. His group also called the on-screen cursor a "bug," but this term was not widely adopted.

He never received any royalties for his mouse invention, partly because his patent expired in 1987, before the personal computer revolution made the mouse an indispensable input device, and also because subsequent mice used different mechanisms that did not infringe upon the original patent. During an interview, he says "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

Some of Engelbart's research and development work in the Augmentation Research Center was funded by ARPA. A 1968 video shows results of this work.

Continuing to quote from the Wikipedia:

Because Engelbart's research and tool-development for online collaboration and interactive human-computer interfaces was partially funded by ARPA, SRI's ARC became involved with the ARPANET (the precursor of the Internet).

On October 29, 1969, the world's first electronic computer network, the ARPANET, was established between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock's lab at UCLA and Engelbart's lab at SRI. Interface Message Processors at both sites served as the backbone of the first Internet.

In addition to SRI and UCLA, UCSB, and the University of Utah were part of the original four network nodes. By December 5, 1969, the entire 4-node network was connected.

ARC soon became the first Network Information Center and thus managed the directory for connections among all ARPANET nodes.

After SRI

Quoting from a a Curriculum Vita:

1977-84. Senior Scientist, Tymshare, Inc., Cupertino, CA. Tymshare had bought the commercial rights to NLS, renamed it AUGMENT, and set the system up as a principal line of business in their newly formed Office Automation Division.

1984-89. Senior Scientist, McDonnell Douglas ISG, San Jose, CA, upon the company acquiring Tymshare in 1984. Worked closely with the Aerospace Components on issues of integrated information-system architectures and associated evolutionary strategies (an extension of work at Stanford Research Institute during 1957-77).

Bootstrap Institute

In 1988, he founded the Bootstrap Institute. Quoting from Bootstrap Institute Website:

The Bootstrap Institute was conceived by Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart to further his lifelong career goal of boosting individual and organizational ability to better address problems that are complex and urgent. It is along this chosen career path that he became prominent as a pioneer of the digital age. He garnered fame especially through his invention of the computer mouse and was the first to use the cathode-ray tube for the display of text, of graphics and of the mouse pointer (the monitor as we know it today). He is credited with pioneering online computing and email, and other inventions and innovations.

Quoting from A 1992 paper by Engelbart:

Groupware to me, personally, is a strategic means to an important end: creating truly high-performance human organizations. My pursuit began in the '50s, aiming to make our organizations and institutions better able to handle complexity and urgency. By 1962 I had evolved a basic conceptual framework for pursuing that goal. I have essentially lived and worked within that framework ever since, steadily evolving and enriching it via many relevant experiences.

…

Figure-1 shows the result of a great deal of thought about how over the centuries our cultures have evolved rich systems of things that, when humans are conditioned and trained to employ them, will augment their basic, genetically endowed capabilities so that they, and their organizations, can exercise capabilities of much higher nature than would otherwise be possible. For lack of a ready-made term, I named this our Augmentation System, and found it valuable to partition it into the two parts as shown - a Human System and a Tool System. I have developed many things from this model. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Awards and Patents

See an extensive list of awards at http://www.bootstrap.org/chronicle/cv.html. The list includes:

• Lovelace Medal. Awarded by The British Computer Society, 2001.
• National Medal of Technology. 2000.
• Lemelson-MIT Prize. 1997.
• Turing Award. 1997.
• Lifetime Achievement Award for Vision, Inspiration, and Contribution. Electronic Networking Association, 1990.
• Lifetime Achievement Award for Technical Excellence. PC Magazine, 1987.

Douglas Engelbart has 20 patents.

Video

Engelbart, Douglas (12/9/1968). The Mother of all Demos. Retrieved 1/14/2009: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097&q=engelbart.

You may experience a minute or so of delay as the 1:14:37 loads its initial part. The video shows the "state of the art" at that time of the mouse and connectivity.

Innovation Journalism (11/27/2008). Doug Engelbart's Keynote at the Fourth Conference on Innovation Journalism. Retrieved 1/14/2009: http://www.innovationjournalism.org/blog/2007/11/video-doug-engelbart-at-ij-4.html.

Comment by David Moursund 1/14/09

Douglas Engelbart's professional career has been driven by the idea of using computer technology to enhance the capabilities of individual people and groups of people. The overriding goal is to help to solve the major problems faced by humans.

A huge amount of progress has occurred in the development of Information and Communication Technology facilities and the underlying science and engineering. Moreover, the rate of progress in these areas is quite high.

A number of people have learned to make effective use of the ICT facilities. However, the vast majority of people use the facilities at a very low intellectual and problem-solving level. Our educational system has not kept pace with the steadily increasing capabilities of ICT as an aid to representing and solving challenging problems.

References

Adams and Lowood (12/1/1986). Interview of Douglas. retrieved 1/14/2009: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/engelbart/main1-ntb.html.

Articles 1958–2001. More than 20 articles are available as PDF files at http://www.bootstrap.org/institute/bibliography.html.

Engelbart, Douglas (1962). Augmenting Human Intelligence: A Conceptual framework. retrieved 1/14/2009: http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/friedewald030402/augmentinghumanintellect/ahi62index.html. Quoting from the paper:

By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble. And by "complex situations" we include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers--whether the problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations. We refer to a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human "feel for a situation" usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.

Man's population and gross product are increasing at a considerable rate, but the complexity of his problems grows still faster, and the urgency with which solutions must be found becomes steadily greater in response to the increased rate of activity and the increasingly global nature of that activity. Augmenting man's intellect, in the sense defined above, would warrant full pursuit by an enlightened society if there could be shown a reasonable approach and some plausible benefits.

Engelbart, Douglas (September 2003). Improving Our Ability to Improve: A Call for Investment in a New Future. The Bootstrap Alliance. Retrieved 1/14/2009: http://www.almaden.ibm.com/coevolution/pdf/engelbart_paper.pdf. Quoting from the paper:

The development of new computing technologies over the past fifty years – in hardware and software – has provided stunningly important changes in the way we work and in the way we solve problems.

I need to get this assertion out in front of you early in this talk, because most of the rest of what I have to say might cause you to think that I have lost track of this progress or that I don’t appreciate it. So, let me get it said … we have made enormous strides since the early 1950s, when I first began thinking seriously about ways to use computers to address important social problems. It has truly been a remarkable fifty years.

At my first job at NACA, the forerunner of NASA, right out of engineering school, there was no vision at all of electronic computers. In fact the term “computers” referred to the room full of women sitting at desks using desk calculators to process the wind tunnel data. This was in the late 40’s. Later in my research, when I thought about using computers to manipulate symbols and language, rather than to do calculations on numbers, most people thought I was really pretty far gone. The idea of interactive computing – well, it seemed simply ludicrous to most sensible people.

So, we have made truly tremendous progress. It has been a marvelous 50 years to be in this business. But that is not what I am going to talk to you about. Not out of lack of appreciation – even a sense of wonder – over what computer technologists have developed – but because I can see that we are not yet really making good progress toward realizing the really substantial payoff that is possible. That payoff will come when we make better use of computers to bring communities of people together and to augment the very human skills that people bring to bear on difficult problems.

Author

The initial version of this page was developed by David Moursund.