Mouse

In Memoriam: Douglas Engelbart, Maestro of the Mouse and So Much More

Silicon Valley has lost one of its true visionaries — but his monuments are everywhere

By Harry McCracken @harrymccrackenJuly 03, 20131 Comment

APIC / GETTY IMAGES

Douglas Engelbart, seen with his invention, the mouse, in San Francisco on Dec. 8, 1968

In Silicon Valley, the term visionary is so routinely applied to folks who are merely bright and clever that it’s lost most of its meaning. But when Douglas Engelbart died at his home in Atherton, Calif., on Tuesday, at the age of 88, we lost someone so brilliantly forward-looking that calling him a visionary almost seems like an understatement.

Engelbart is best known as the inventor of the computer mouse, but leaving it at that is like praising Orville and Wilbur Wright for their pioneering role in the history of propellers. He began his computer research in the 1950s and ended up at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI). In the 1960s, at a time when human interaction with computers was conducted largely by means of punch cards — and most of the humans doing the interacting were computer scientists — Engelbart saw computers as a way for human beings to augment their intellect. Then he set about building the necessary tools to make that not only possible, but also easy./.../