Doug Engelbart’s invention of the modern mouse, along with Xerox’s contibution of the trackball, was such a phenomenal success after the computer itself, that for every household that has a computer, we can almost automatically assume that they hold on a mouse.

Nevertheless, apparently the idea of the mouse did not take off until much later, when Apple decided to copy the idea of the mouse in the 1980s and successfully commercialised it. The whole idea of using a mouse as an interactive pointing device for new display technology was subjected to great disbelief for ten years before the demo. Even 30 years after the demo, it remained at as a lab-only phenomenal that probably would have been deemed as an invention that was lack of commercial appeal. It must have taken a lot of persistence and belief on the part of Doug and his team to actualise the concept into a product itself.

Through the interview with Doug Engelbart by Andrew Maisel, I then realised that Doug Engelbart had intended for the mouse to be only a small step towards “augmenting human intellect” – the ability for humans to increase their ability to solve complex problems. From there we truly realised that the mouse really works beyond a mere pointing device. With this invention, we realised the way we manage our data has been completely changed with the invention of the mouse. It became so much more fast, effective and easy to select, sort organise the information on the screen display.

Doug Engelbart’s contribution to the world was not just the mouse, but also the hypertext that forms the basis for the invention of the HTML for the world renowned World Wide Web, the dynamic on-screen editing, and even video-conferencing. Given a chance to grab his signature, I would definitely seize it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Mother of all Demos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.