Welcome to "Living History" - the main portal to the Doug Engelbart Archive Collection and Virtual Exhibits. Who was Doug Engelbart, and how did he impact our lives for years to come? According to a recent article in the NY Times:
"Douglas C. Engelbart [was] a visionary scientist whose singular epiphany in 1950 about technology's potential to expand human intelligence led to a host of inventions — among them the computer mouse — that became the basis for both the Internet and the modern personal computer"
– John Markoff, NY Times
Here you can learn about Doug and his research team's many accomplishments, as told through considerable archive records spanning decades of prolific pioneering visionary pursuit. This comprehensive collection of historic texts, photos, video footage, anduil artifacts is curated across multiple institutions. Refer to the Table of Contents (left panel) to browse by media type, by institution, and the stories and exhibits of his vision, his pioneering firsts and more. 1a
Watch the video tribute below for a brief overview of Doug Engelbart's pioneering work. See also A Lifetime Pursuit for a short biographical sketch of his career – his vision, inspiration, accomplishments, and strategic approach – how and why he did it all. For more, check out his Oral Histories by the Computer History Museum, the Smithsonian, and Stanford University Special Collections.
Watch highlights of his pioneering vision and accomplishments
Doug Engelbart is credited with "demonstrating the power and the potential of the computer in the information age." Most of his epic technological firsts were in full operational use within his research lab by the mid to late 1960s, through a unified system called NLS. NLS was continuously evolved, along with his team's processes and thinking, following Doug's design strategy – one of his little known organizational firsts – a customer-centered, rapid-prototyping 'bootstrapping strategy' for 'augmenting the human intellect' within and across organizations. All this was in the service of prototyping the high-performance organizations and teams of the future. For a brief overview, see above Story of a True Pioneer.
ENGELBART'S HISTORIC FIRSTS HIGHLIGHTS
Vision for Humanity
from Augmenting Human Intellect to Bootstrapping Collective IQ – a powerful framework, a manifesto for humanity
Doug's Great Demo
the public debut of these firsts and more came to be called the "Mother of All Demos"
For Knowledge Work
using computers to compose, study, modify, research, brainstorm, plan, coordinate – toward more effective collective action
Collaborative
meeting support, video conferencing, and other key provisions for online coordination and collaboration
Hyperlinked
to easily connect the dots, to link to and zoom in and out of detail,
to harness
'new media' in sync with human thought
For Team Work
prototyping the fast, flexible organization of the future, beginning with experimental teams and networked initiatives
The Mouse
learn how and why Doug Engelbart invented the mouse, and its companion 'keyset', with links to more
Human Centered
new processes, paradigms, roles, skills, etc. were also rigorously explored and co-evolved with the tools
Networked
the first transmission between two sites, first to support online communities, networked information, networked initiatives
NLS / Augment
the system that integrated and facilitated
all these capabilities in a unified environment,
used extensively by the lab and
their network
Strategic
his design strategy, which drove the innovation and continuous improvement, proved revolutionary
Recently we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of
THREE great milestones with footage, memorabilia, and fun facts galore! See Doug's Great 1968 Demo, his 1969 Demo Sequel, andNetworked for details
MORE FIRSTS: See also The Keyset (companion to The Mouse) | Doug's Demo Sequel (1969, the year following his MOAD) | For System Developers (COMING SOON! a special case of Knowledge Work and Team Work, for example his software team used NLS for all aspects of their work: designing, planning, coding, compiling, bug tracking, etc.).
Engelbart Video Archive Collection - NEW! the Internet Archive now offers for online viewing an extensive video collection of Engelbart's lectures, demos, interviews, and TV appearances dating back to 1968
Watch Engelbart Oral History with John Markoff (2002)
The archives include the original computer mouse (owned by SRI International, now on exhibit at the Smithsonian), later production mice, and various versions of the 5-key keyset -- an input device for entering commands and text with the left hand while your right hand is pointing and clicking with the mouse.
You can also see an authentic replica of the original mouse in the main lobby at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, where Doug conducted his historic research, in a display case showcasing his work along with other prominent SRI inventions; the Engelbart display includes the wooden mouse, historic photos of Engelbart, and a brass plaque rendering of the US Patent on the mouse. See Special Collections below for more at SRI International.
Doug's Published Papers and Books - bibliography maintained at Doug Engelbart Institute with links to all of Engelbart's published papers and books, selected white papers, as well as links to books that feature his work.
At Stanford University - Doug's lab notebooks, correspondence, reports, memos, papers - available at the MouseSite Archive page, Stanford Libraries Special Collections, with links to their Annotated Table of Contents page, and Finding Aid - a Partial Guide to the Douglas C. Engelbart Papers, 1953-1998. Selected papers and reports are available online, the rest are hardcopy only. Stanford's extensive physical collection includes Doug's original notebooks, calendars, files, videotapes, audiotapes, etc. See Special Collections below for more at Stanford University.
At the Computer History Museum - home of hundreds of historic hardcopy documents from Engelbart and team's early work at his SRI ARC research lab, including the NLS/Augment Journals, and the complete archives from the Network Information Center (NIC) which was launched in Doug's lab by Jake Feinler. See the Finding Aid: Guide to the SRI ARC/NIC Records. See Special Collections below for more at Computer History Museum.
The Bootstrap "Paradigm Map" - slides used by Doug throughout the 1990s to describe his guiding vision, includes links to videos of Doug's sessions presenting the key concepts at various venues.
We also maintain and continue to use a working version of NLS/Augment software on a Sun server, as well as various iterations of the Augment client software, including AugTerm and Visual AugTerm (VAT). Augment and AugTerm are also being preserved by the Software Preservation Projects.
The HyperScope software, developed by the Doug Engelbart Institute in 2006 under an NSF grant to extend the standard browser with the precision browsing and viewing features first demonstrated in Augment/NLS, is documented at hyperscope.org
Watch Demos of the NLS/Augment software given by Doug Engelbart and members of his team dating back to 1968, including what is now known as the "Mother of All Demos."
See Historic Events for select game-changing events in Doug's career, such as his 1968 Mother of All Demos, and the first transmission over the net in 1969, and a succession of events later held to reflect and celebrate them.
Doug Engelbart Institute: The Doug Engelbart Archives,
our main portal into Doug's archives, as well as the following selections on the main menu of our website:
About | About Doug, History, Library, Press | Press Clippings. Special subcollections include stories of pioneering firsts such as the mouse, the 1968 demo, interactive computing, groupware, hypermedia, networking, Vannevar Bush's influence on Doug's work and other pioneers of the information age, and the strategic approach from which all of it emerged. We are currently processing all his work materials (50 years worth) from his home. See also the Doug Engelbart Institute on Facebook and ARC Bootstrapper on Facebook for more photos and postings.
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The CHM also curates considerable hardcopy Engelbart archives (about 1/3 of his total archives)
including documents, notes, and records from Engelbart's historic lab at SRI and from the Network
Information Center which launced in his lab; see the comprehensive
Finding Aid
compiled by Jake Feinler, as well as the CHM
Jake
Feinler Oral History
(102702199);
it is also home to the
Software Preservation Project.
Peruse the Special Collections section above for links to brick and mortar archive collections you can visit, with links to respective Finding Aids.
Feel free to
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at the Doug Engelbart Institute for guidance on your area of interest.
The Doug Engelbart Archive Collection documents the life's work, vision and accomplishments of Doug Engelbart. This is an ongoing initiative of the Doug Engelbart Institute, in collaboration with SRI International, Sun Labs, Internet Archive, New Media Consortium, and distinguished volunteers from Doug's alumni group, to preserve for historic interest, and to inform a next generation. The initial thrust of this Initiative has been to gather, sift through, catalog, digitize, and upload archival documents, video footage, photos, and digital files for preservation and broad-based accessibility. We are currently working with 2,000+ digitized historic photos, 150+ digitized video tapes, plus dozens of digitized papers. This work complements the existing comprehensive collections at Stanford University Libraries Special Collections, and the Computer History Museum.
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The original mouse
