Doug Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse, dies at 88

[DJ aka GDR DJ]

Doug Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse, dies at 88

 

 

 

Doug Engelbart, a visionary who invented the computer mouse and developed other technology that has transformed the way people work, play and communicate, has died. He was 88.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, where Engelbart had been a fellow since 2005, said on Wednesday that it was notified of the death in an email from his daughter and biographer, Christina.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, when mainframes took up entire rooms and were fed data on punch cards, Engelbart already was envisioning a day when computers would empower people to share ideas and solve problems in ways that seemed unfathomable at the time.

He said his work was all about "augmenting human intellect" – a mission that boiled down to making computers more intuitive to use. One of the biggest advances was the mouse, which he developed in the 1960s and patented in 1970. At the time, it was a wooden shell covering two metal wheels: an "X-Y position indicator for a display system."

Engelbart "brought tremendous value to society", said Curtis R Carlson, the CEO of SRI International. "We will miss his genius, warmth and charm. Doug's legacy is immense. Anyone in the world who uses a mouse or enjoys the productive benefits of a personal computer is indebted to him."

The notion of operating the inside of a computer with a tool on the outside was way ahead of its time when Engelbart began working on it. The mouse did not become commercially available until 1984, with the release of Apple's then-revolutionary Macintosh, a precursor to future breakthroughs such as the iPhone and iPad.

Engelbart conceived the computer mouse so early in the evolution of computers that he and his colleagues didn't profit much from it. The mouse patent had a 17-year life span, allowing the technology to pass into the public domain in 1987. That prevented Engelbart from collecting royalties on the mouse when it was in its widest use. At least a billion have been sold since the mid-1980s.

Although computer mice remain prevalent, their usage is waning as people increasingly control smartphones and tablets in an even simpler way: by swiping their finger across a display screen.

 

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