
Show HN: Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart's Great Demo - ontouchstart
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1k4oC2bzjgUOiU9vdadjrBpEwWGaqJWsA
======
ontouchstart
It is very interesting that now we start to see trolling and vandalism on that
page. No surprise for a public wiki. I published it here to HN instead of
tweet just to limit that kind of publicity but encourage people in the
community to experiment in the spirit of Doug. That is the best way to
celebrate his legacy.

For those internet trolls, no big deal, they will get bored after 15 minutes.
To people who think at a little bit longer time scale, that is just noise.

P.S. This Show HN post was posted yesterday and got no notice. Until it was
kindly re-upped

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)

Thank you dang!

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simonh
In 1968 I was 2 years old. When I was about 10 to 12 years old, I forget
exactly, I went on a school trip to an ICL data center to look at the punched
card readers and line printers. Even a decade later, Doug's work seemed
impossibly futuristic.

In 1984, 16 years after the demo, John C. Dvorak famously wrote of the mouse
"There is no evidence that people want to use these things."

~~~
mistrial9
Another anecdote: an expensive training class onsite in 1987 at a new Adobe
Systems building in Silicon Valley, with Apple/Mac developers well-represented
and a few financially successful developers from other OS. The whole class was
halted ten minutes in because one of the non-Mac attendees realized the whole
curriculum of "developing drivers for Adobe Postscript" was going to be
presented using a point-and-click coursework, and called a senior contact at
Adobe in to make a scene.. because, you know, a "mouse" ?

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ontouchstart
I won't waste time fighting trolls. This is the latest snapshot where we can
always reset to:

[https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/9acd0280...](https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/9acd028083152de32878d6e03e9b0409/thedemo.ipynb)

I think the community can clean it up when things get out of hand. Let's see
how it evolves.

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En_gr_Student
Also worth saying...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMjPqr1s-cg)

Are we now, this moment, coming to 5:15-5:34? I suspect, and hope, that the
eulogist was pointing this toward ARPA and SRI and not me.

~~~
ontouchstart
Thanks for sharing. Very touching.

Added it to the notebook

[https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e...](https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e14c5599b9e057f53026efbdf/thedemo.ipynb#scrollTo=4VS3LpRsT00B)

It is best to be watched after watching a few minutes of this cell:

[https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e...](https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/c538817e14c5599b9e057f53026efbdf/thedemo.ipynb#scrollTo=IHF4o9p19oxI)

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JoblessWonder
I remember first hearing about this demo in the book "Fire in the Valley." It
was amazing reading about what was unveiled in one demo.

Here is a link to a section on Google Books:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=-g5QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT387&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=-g5QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT387&lpg=PT387&dq=%22fire+in+the+valley%22+engelbart&source=bl&ots=1w89-SfVlh&sig=ES9ady21kj1OQN6wv56lezNsSpE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0ubLEhZbfAhXkqVQKHdK6DrIQ6AEwBHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22fire%20in%20the%20valley%22%20engelbart&f=false)

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ontouchstart
Since it is a wiki kind of page that any one can edit. Feel free to explore in
the sandbox cell.

Anytime if you want to keep a copy, you can save a snapshot copy as gist, such
as this one

[https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/2d20c3b9...](https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/2d20c3b9050a25483e898831f19b12af/thedemo.ipynb)

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ontouchstart
For those of you who wants to jump to the mouse demo, here is a direct link
(on a saved snapshot):

[https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/7ae904ac...](https://colab.research.google.com/gist/ontouchstart/7ae904acda749f989cde895d4f800d08/thedemo.ipynb#scrollTo=oDmYYW7BAIUk)

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
It's 50 years since the demo, and about 18 years later, I wrote short paper
introducing the concept of WIMPs to my then boss. Windows, Icon, Menus,
Pointers.

Which goes to show the uptake was not that fast.

Boss let me buy Windows v1.02

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ontouchstart
This post was inspired by a discussion in this thread.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18635733)

