
Doug Engelbart’s 1968 demo - whatrocks
https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/374/464/
======
fernly
In the shots over his shoulder you see him using the original mouse with his
right hand, and a "chord keyboard" with his left. He calls it a "keyset".
That's a set of buttons, basically function keys, except they can be "played"
in combinations. The chord keyboard was also an I/O device on the Xerox Alto,
but AFAIK wasn't used again.

I notice also, things didn't go as expected; he makes quite a few mistakes and
very charmingly apologizes. But the fact that you can make mistakes and
smoothly recover from them, was an important part of the demo.

For context, by 1968 the concept of interacting directly with a computer in
what we today would call command-line mode had been around for several years.
The DEC PDP-1 was released in 1959; the IBM 1620 in 1960; Multics had started
in 1964; the IBM 360 series began deliveries in 1965; all allowed an operator
who had the privilege of being in the "machine room" to enter commands and get
responses at a typewriter. The PDP-1 was alone (I think?) in having a
2-dimensional vector-based screen, but it was used for graphics (including the
original Space War), not for text.

Overwhelmingly, the paradigm for working with a computer was to prepare a
"job" consisting of commands and blocks of data, all in punch cards, which was
run as a "batch", producing output to print a/o disk or tape. If you made a
mistake in setting up your job, you found out about it later, and could only
"edit" by re-punching some cards, and re-running it.

So when Englebart showed smooth interaction with data, editing and changing
data ad-hoc, and making mistakes and correcting them ad-hoc without drama, on
a two-dimensional screen -- that alone was a revolution. Hyper-linked media,
hierarchical lists, that was icing.

~~~
neilv
Twiddler chording keyboards were used by wearable computing people in at least
the '90s. Looks like some Twiddler brand devices are still marketed.
[https://twiddler.tekgear.com/](https://twiddler.tekgear.com/)

------
antoniuschan99
I messaged his daughter Christina a few years back about what influenced his
work:

Here are two key links to his thinking on what's missing in today's
information technology that would be very important to integrate in a seamless
environment:

About Open Hyperdocument Systems -
[http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/ohs.html](http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/ohs.html)
short description and links to resources

Toward High-Performance Organizations:
[http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html](http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html)
A Strategic Role for Groupware. 1992 Engelbart article [print-version]
(AUGMENT,132811,). And here's a bit about what he himself pioneered and why:
[http://dougengelbart.org/events/1968-demo-
highlights.html](http://dougengelbart.org/events/1968-demo-highlights.html)
Video highlights of Doug's 1968 Demo

And lastly his historic work is captured in this repository for your browsing
pleasure: [http://dougengelbart.org/library/engelbart-
archives.html](http://dougengelbart.org/library/engelbart-archives.html)
Engelbart Digital Archive

------
kps
The associated paper is available for free this month.

 _A research center for augmenting human intellect_
[https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1476589.1476645](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1476589.1476645)

------
dang
Many previous posts, of course, but most of the threads have been a bit less
interesting than you might expect from the classicness of the topic. Some of
the better ones were:

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18626215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18626215)

2015
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9366039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9366039)

2013
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6875879)

2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1939458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1939458)

2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138879)
(Stewart Brand shot the video? who knew)

~~~
raleighm
On the topic of videos involving Brand and Engelbart, they make amusing cameos
in the film by Ted Nelson, which I recently stumbled upon.

"Silicon Valley Story -- A Very Short Comedy"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXlyMrv8_dQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXlyMrv8_dQ)

[note: brief NSFW moment from 2:10 to 2:25]

~~~
dang
That's amazing!

Ted might do an AMA on Hacker News, if I haven't spoiled our chances by taking
pathetically long to follow up about it.

~~~
raleighm
While I'm at it, here are Engelbart, Nelson and Howard Rheingold chatting
casually over dinner. I really love this very much. These are two of my
favorite bookmarks.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLCIw-
HSJc&t=221](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLCIw-HSJc&t=221)

(I set the start time to skip Rheingold's introduction but feel free to go
back and view.)

~~~
dang
That's marvelous! "It was like having Galileo and Newton over for dinner, as
far as I'm concerned."

I did go back and view Howard's intro and it's very nice as well. His love
shines through.

------
whatrocks
I'm not surprised this has been shared many times before, and yet I'm glad
people are still discovering it. My journey to Engelbart's demo came through
reading "The Dream Machine" book about JCR Licklider, which itself is an
incredible computer history record.

~~~
raleighm
Same here. This is a rare item I don't at all mind seeing every six months or
so (it feels like).

------
MintelIE
Anybody watching this should also read As We May Think.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think)

------
acd
"The mother of all demos."

Hyperlinking Computer mouse Videoconference

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)

Which influenced Xerox Parc which in turned influenced Apple.

~~~
notkaiho
I wouldn't limit it to just Apple. Literally all of modern computing tools are
influenced, to a greater or occasionally lesser extent, by this work.

------
server_bot
Would highly recommend the "Advent of Computing" podcast episode on this
topic:
[http://adventofcomputing.com/?guid=3a1d7af237bb48bb985e795c2...](http://adventofcomputing.com/?guid=3a1d7af237bb48bb985e795c21f56bc3)

------
divbzero
Still boggles my mind every time I see this. Imagine putting together a demo
today that will still be discussed in earnest half a century from now…

~~~
mongol
I think the Jobs Iphone demo might be that.

~~~
pfarrell
You’ve got something there. The last time I saw something, in tech, that felt
“magical” was the first time I saw an iPhone. The intro video, from Jobs, is
something I’ve watched several times over the years. It’s a masterpiece of
marketing and storytelling.

------
randoman2000
Malwarebytes throwing up the following warning AGAIN: Website blocked due to
Trojan.

Shortly after my original post about this the site was accessible and no
warnings.. now I am receiving the same warning again from Malwarebytes. Not
sure whats going on but thought I would let folks know.

------
EGreg
This was my homage to Doug Engelbart from 2020...

Instead of files and mouse cursors we have a vastly different set of
components that all work together, and of course they integrate with the
modern features like ApplePay and QR code scanning. Oh yeah and there is
videoconferencing... just like in his demo :)

[https://youtu.be/FG93VxqV0EY](https://youtu.be/FG93VxqV0EY)

------
randoman2000
Malwarebytes throwing up the following warning: Website blocked due to Trojan.
Just an FYI

