Creator of mouse, Doug Engelbart dies at 88

The inventor of the computer mouse, Doug Engelbart has died, aged 88. He was born on 30th January 1925 in Portland, Oregon. He studied electrical engineering at Oregen State University and then worked as a radar technician during World War II.

Engelbart first came up with the idea in the 1960's when he designed a wooden shell covering two metal wheels, patenting it long before it became popular worldwide.

Engelbart was a visionary, working on early versions of email, word processing packages and even video teleconferences at a California research institute.

The news reached the Computer History Museum when they were notified by his daughter Christina, in an email. Engelbart was said to have been in poor health and subsequently died Tuesday night in his sleep.

After working at the Stanford Research Institute he then started his own laboratory, the Augmentation Research Center. He helped to develop ARPANet, the government research network that led to the internet.

In San Francisco in 1968 he made a presentation, this was the first public demonstration of the mouse. At the same presentation he explained the theory of text based links, which would form the basic backbone of the internet as we know it today. He also held the first video teleconference.

Sadly for Engelbart, he didn't make a lot of money from his creation of the mouse, as his patent ran out in 1987, before the mouse was widely accepted globally. One billion mice have been sold.

Kitguru says: A true visionary.

Become a Patron!