Douglas Engelbart

Inducted in the Class of 2000

Notable accomplishments:

• Worked on development and construction of CALDIC (the California Digital Computer) while a student at Cal Berkeley (1951-1955)
• Founded the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (1963)
• Invented the computer mouse pointing device (1967)
• Led team at ARC that developed bit-mapped screens (desktops), networked computers, hypertext and word processing as part of the integrated real-tme  oN-Line System computer — all of which debuted at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE) – Computer Society’s Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in 1968

Quotes:
“For me, a workstation is the portal into a person’s ‘augmented knowledge workshop’ — the place in which he finds the data and tools with which he does his knowledge work, and through which he collaborates with similarly equipped workers.” (The Augmented Knowledge Workshop, Association for Computing Machinery, 1988)

“In 20 or 30 years, you’ll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world.” (Lemelson-MIT Award Ceremony, 1997)

Suggested reading:
“Bookstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing,” by Thierry Bardini (2000)

Learn more:
Douglas Engelbart entry at the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame