Douglas Carl Engelbart, the man who invented computer mouse:
Douglas Carl Engelbart, the man behind the invention of computer mouse passed away on Tuesday(July 2, 2013) night due to ill health.
Born in Portland, Oregon in January 30 1925, he graduated in 1942 from Portland's Franklin High School and later just after half way through his college studies at Oregon State College, he was selected in United States Navy where he served at philippines as a radar technician. When on this job he read Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think" called for action to make knowledge widely available that inspired him to return back to complete his Bachelor's degree in 1948 at Oregon State College in electrical engineering. Then was hired by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Ames Research Center. During his marriage he
had a self realization that he just had a job to sustain his family but had no career goals and thought of making the world a better place. So to make this possible organized efforts leading to effective solutions were required. He read about the recent advances in computer and realized that computers can be improved by boosting efforts to solve the important problems and having worked as a radar technician, got him the idea that information can be analyzed and displayed on a screen. Thus his life's mission was to make the computers, a number manipulating tool more interactive so that workers can operate them sitting at display stations and collect information and process them.
So completed his masters in electrical engineering in 1953 and Ph.D. in 1955 at University of california, Berkeley where he stayed as an assistant professor for a year. While he was a graduate he assisted in constructing California Digital Computer project. To put his research work on storage devices into consumer products started a company called 'Digital Techniques'. Soon after a year, he decided to go back to research and joined at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California in 1957 where he initially worked with Hewitt Crane on magnetic devices and miniaturization of electronics.
He finally grew up to become a dedicated engineer who always focussed on to make the interaction between the human and the computer cushier and simpler. By 1962, he came out with a report titled 'Augmenting Human Intellect: a Conceptual Framework' that spoke about his vison which got him necessary funds from ARPA to continue his research to realize his dreams. To accelerate the innovations he employed a set of organizing principles in his new Augmentation Research Centre(ARC) lab which led him leading his team develop a oN-Line System(NLS), hypertext, bitmapped screen for computer interface and the most famous hardware called mouse for interacting with the computer which received its patent in 1970, described as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system" nicknamed by him as "mouse" due to the tail like wire that made it resemble the creature mouse.
This computer mouse had a wooden shell and beneath were two metal wheels pendicular to each other to detect the relative motion with respect to the surface on which it is placed thus converting the relative motion of metal wheels to axial motion of the cursor on screen.
In 1968, on a winter afternoon which he considered as one of his precious and a memorable moment in career life when he had to deliver a presentation to thousands of leading technologists for an hour describing his inventions and ideas which later was referred as "mother of all demos". He showed how the image and voice of a person miles away can be transmitted and displayed on screen, by bringing out the first video-conference with the help of his colleague where he displayed his image and made them hear his voice, who was 30 miles away. It was this day when his cubic invention, the mouse was brought out for public appearance and even the idea that about how text-based links can be used to bind pages of information which later after years brought up the internet where migration from one page to another is dependent on links. The chorded keyboard too was shown on that day which grasped several minds in the gathering.
For his invention of mouse he never received the royalties. The SRI patented the mouse and after few years sold it for nearly $40,000 to Apple Computer. He had different views about computing that it would witness timeshare, networked computers in future led to scattering of his research team who had personal computer development in their minds. The ARC lab was then negotiated to Tymshare since SRI's management had conflicting views with Engelbert and at the same time his house was burned down creating more problems for him. Tymshare then employed him as senior scientist and the other lab staff and used it to provide commercial service leading to restriction his desire to perform further research. Soon this Tymshare was occupied by McDonnell Douglas imposing same restrictions on him which compelled him to retire in 1986 and carry research freely.
So in 1988 he along with his daughter Christina founded Bootstrap Institute to realise his ideas by use of seminars to create sufficient interest among graduates and so a non profit base called Bootsrap Alliance to implement his works. The institute promotes using a strategic bootstrapping approach to solve problems at a greater pace.
His book "Boosting Our Collective IQ" provides a complete detail of his bootstrapping ideas. In 1995, he was the first to receive Yure Rubinsky Memorial Award. He even received largest single prize for invention and innovation which is Lemelson-MIT Prize of $500,000 in 1997 and even National MEdal of Technology, the United States highest technology award in December 2000 and many more awards and honorary doctorate too from Yale University in May 2011.
The dedication he showed, got him the 'Internet Pioneer' tag. Since then his inventions have changed the world making interaction with computer and the world of internet easier which was his only goal in life which he finally achieved because of his determination and hard work. So this short biography of Douglas C Engelbart follows that its not always the dropouts from schools or college that move up to be successfull in revolutionizing the world rather its their only enthusiasm and motivation to work hard to realize their dreams that get them on top.
Douglas Carl Engelbart, the man behind the invention of computer mouse passed away on Tuesday(July 2, 2013) night due to ill health.
Born in Portland, Oregon in January 30 1925, he graduated in 1942 from Portland's Franklin High School and later just after half way through his college studies at Oregon State College, he was selected in United States Navy where he served at philippines as a radar technician. When on this job he read Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think" called for action to make knowledge widely available that inspired him to return back to complete his Bachelor's degree in 1948 at Oregon State College in electrical engineering. Then was hired by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Ames Research Center. During his marriage he
had a self realization that he just had a job to sustain his family but had no career goals and thought of making the world a better place. So to make this possible organized efforts leading to effective solutions were required. He read about the recent advances in computer and realized that computers can be improved by boosting efforts to solve the important problems and having worked as a radar technician, got him the idea that information can be analyzed and displayed on a screen. Thus his life's mission was to make the computers, a number manipulating tool more interactive so that workers can operate them sitting at display stations and collect information and process them.
So completed his masters in electrical engineering in 1953 and Ph.D. in 1955 at University of california, Berkeley where he stayed as an assistant professor for a year. While he was a graduate he assisted in constructing California Digital Computer project. To put his research work on storage devices into consumer products started a company called 'Digital Techniques'. Soon after a year, he decided to go back to research and joined at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California in 1957 where he initially worked with Hewitt Crane on magnetic devices and miniaturization of electronics.
He finally grew up to become a dedicated engineer who always focussed on to make the interaction between the human and the computer cushier and simpler. By 1962, he came out with a report titled 'Augmenting Human Intellect: a Conceptual Framework' that spoke about his vison which got him necessary funds from ARPA to continue his research to realize his dreams. To accelerate the innovations he employed a set of organizing principles in his new Augmentation Research Centre(ARC) lab which led him leading his team develop a oN-Line System(NLS), hypertext, bitmapped screen for computer interface and the most famous hardware called mouse for interacting with the computer which received its patent in 1970, described as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system" nicknamed by him as "mouse" due to the tail like wire that made it resemble the creature mouse.
This computer mouse had a wooden shell and beneath were two metal wheels pendicular to each other to detect the relative motion with respect to the surface on which it is placed thus converting the relative motion of metal wheels to axial motion of the cursor on screen.
In 1968, on a winter afternoon which he considered as one of his precious and a memorable moment in career life when he had to deliver a presentation to thousands of leading technologists for an hour describing his inventions and ideas which later was referred as "mother of all demos". He showed how the image and voice of a person miles away can be transmitted and displayed on screen, by bringing out the first video-conference with the help of his colleague where he displayed his image and made them hear his voice, who was 30 miles away. It was this day when his cubic invention, the mouse was brought out for public appearance and even the idea that about how text-based links can be used to bind pages of information which later after years brought up the internet where migration from one page to another is dependent on links. The chorded keyboard too was shown on that day which grasped several minds in the gathering.
For his invention of mouse he never received the royalties. The SRI patented the mouse and after few years sold it for nearly $40,000 to Apple Computer. He had different views about computing that it would witness timeshare, networked computers in future led to scattering of his research team who had personal computer development in their minds. The ARC lab was then negotiated to Tymshare since SRI's management had conflicting views with Engelbert and at the same time his house was burned down creating more problems for him. Tymshare then employed him as senior scientist and the other lab staff and used it to provide commercial service leading to restriction his desire to perform further research. Soon this Tymshare was occupied by McDonnell Douglas imposing same restrictions on him which compelled him to retire in 1986 and carry research freely.
So in 1988 he along with his daughter Christina founded Bootstrap Institute to realise his ideas by use of seminars to create sufficient interest among graduates and so a non profit base called Bootsrap Alliance to implement his works. The institute promotes using a strategic bootstrapping approach to solve problems at a greater pace.
His book "Boosting Our Collective IQ" provides a complete detail of his bootstrapping ideas. In 1995, he was the first to receive Yure Rubinsky Memorial Award. He even received largest single prize for invention and innovation which is Lemelson-MIT Prize of $500,000 in 1997 and even National MEdal of Technology, the United States highest technology award in December 2000 and many more awards and honorary doctorate too from Yale University in May 2011.
The dedication he showed, got him the 'Internet Pioneer' tag. Since then his inventions have changed the world making interaction with computer and the world of internet easier which was his only goal in life which he finally achieved because of his determination and hard work. So this short biography of Douglas C Engelbart follows that its not always the dropouts from schools or college that move up to be successfull in revolutionizing the world rather its their only enthusiasm and motivation to work hard to realize their dreams that get them on top.
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