American Inventor

Douglas Carl Engelbart pioneered many of the underlying concepts of contemporary computing, including: the mouse, interactive computing, hypermedia, multiple windows, outline processing, context-sensitive help, teleconferencing, and the graphical user interface. Throughout his career, Engelbart has been concerned about the development of computer-controlled information systems to store, handle, and display data. Specifically he is interested in the synergistic relationship between the human intellect and computerized information handling.

Engelbart began studying engineering in college, but left at the end of his sophomore year to join a Navy RADAR training program. In the Navy, he was introduced to a number of new communication technologies including: wave propagation, antennas, and amplifiers. Towards the end of his naval career, he read Vannevar Bush’s article "As We May Think" and it inspired him to pursue a career developing better communication tools. Engelbart went back to college to finish his degree. Afterwards, he accepted an engineering job at the Ames Research Laboratory.

In 1951, Engelbart began to think about a new goal for himself. For several months, he contemplated his skills and the various kinds of goals he could pursue. Similar to Bush, Engelbart realized that humankind was moving into an era in which the complexity and urgency of global difficulties were surpassing the traditional tools for dealing with social and political problems.

Based on his experiences as a RADAR technician, Engelbart envisioned using computers as a technology to interact with information displayed on screens. He saw the connection between a cathode-ray screen, an information processor, and a medium for representing symbols to a person. Engelbart began sketching out a system that would enable people to steer through different information domains using knobs, levers and transducers.

He quit his job and went to graduate school where the students were punching cards to interact with computers. In contrast, Engelbart wanted to connect the computer to a keyboard and have people directly interact with the machine. After graduating, he went to work for the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). By 1959, Engelbart had enough recognition at SRI to begin to pursue his own research interests. With a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, he spent a couple of years writing a paper on interactive computing.

Engelbart’s paper, A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man’s Intellect , was published in 1963. In it, he defined augmenting man’s intellect as the capability of a man or woman to approach a complex problem situation, gain understanding about his or her particular needs, and to derive solutions to their problems. Engelbart’s system was conceptualized to support people working as diplomats, executives, social scientists, software engineers, attorneys, and designers. He wanted to develop a set of core tools that could be used by all these various intellectual workers with specialized tools to help the decision-making process. His framework attempted to orient people toward the real possibilities and problems associated with using modern technology. Specifically, he wanted to match human capabilities with tool capabilities. The point at which these capabilities meet is the "man-artifact interface" or the human-computer interface.

Engelbart created a diagram of a general system to illustrate how human processes interact with artifact processes. He referred to it as our H-LAM/T system (Human using Language, Artifacts, and Methodology, in which he is Trained). Engelbart proposed to design a new computer-based system that brought together a trained human being with his or her artifacts, language, and methods. In contrast to paper and pencils, artifacts in the new system would include computers with information storage, handling, and display devices. Engelbart realized that a shift from traditional tools to digital ones would alter the way people work. Moreover, a change in tools would alter the language and methods utilized in organizational problem-solving activities.

Engelbart’s research framework employed a multi-disciplinary approach that included communication theory and the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Whorf argued that language plays a prominent role in shaping the perceptual world of the people who use it. Engelbart expanded Whorf’s concept to include the tools that manipulate symbols. He then proposed a Neo-Whorfian hypothesis: the tools or media we use to manipulate symbols influence language and ultimately the ways in which we think about and perceive the world.

Moreover, Engelbart was aware that moving from manual to automated symbol manipulation systems would create changes in the human system. From today’s point-of-view, this is called technological determinism—technology will have a dramatic impact on society and the human psyche. To counterbalance these technological effects, Engelbart developed the method of bootstrapping or co-evolution. By being conscious of the changes occurring in both tool and human systems, researchers should be able to establish a balance between them.

Engelbart and his team served as both the developers of the technologies and the subjects for the analysis of his augmentation computer system. To implement the bootstrapping strategy, a team of people from psychology, computer programming, and computer engineering were assembled. People working on the project were expected to change to the newly evolving computer design and its emerging terminology.

Once the framework was completed, Engelbart needed to get funding to build a working model. He gained financial support from the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) and set-up the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at SRI. His team wanted to invent new methods to process effectively the large volumes of information that knowledge workers use. Knowledge workers was a term coined by Peter Drucker to describe people who created and applied knowledge to productive goals. Engelbart’s primary research goal was to invent technologies that would support the knowledge worker. A secondary goal was to develop computer systems that support active collaboration among groups of workers. This aspect of Engelbart’s research has developed into the discipline of computer-supported-cooperative work (CSCW). His augmentation system was the first major research work done in office automation and text processing.

Using this system, electronic documents could be accessed from any connected terminal and they were "shared" among members of the group. This project was the first prototype of a paperless office because no paper changed hands. The ability to create, share, and store documents was achieved by connecting the text-editing system with a special kind of electronic filing organization system that would serve as a combined memory, record, and medium for unifying individual research efforts. Additionally, a software journal was established for individuals and groups to have access to a shared electronic space.

Computer interfaces were designed to enable users to interact with the information displayed on screens. In addition to a traditional keyboard, the user could input commands with a five-key, one-hand chord keyset. Simple one character commands were input through the chord. For example, I (insert), D (delete), and M (move or rearrange). After the command is typed, the user points with the "mouse" to tell the system where on the screen the command should be executed. Engelbart’s mouse was a little box with hidden wheels underneath and a cable to the terminal to signal the computer and move the cursor around on the screen.

In December 1968, Engelbart and his team demonstrated their vision of interactive computing at the ACM/IEEE-CS Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. In the demonstration, Engelbart accessed files from the computer’s memory and displayed them on a large screen in the auditorium. Then he collapsed the written descriptions into a series of one-line headings. A click on the mouse button would then expand the headings into the larger text. Another command showed how the various documents were linked together in the system. Finally, Engelbart connected with a colleague located at his lab and displayed his image on the screen. In this demonstration, Engelbart showed hypertext links (co-invented with Jeff Rulifson), computer-supported-cooperative work, video conferencing, computer graphics, and word processing. Additionally the computer had a dialogue support system which included electronic mail.

In 1969, SRI became the second site connected to the ARPANET system (the beginning of the Internet). In the early 1970s, the wider ARPA-funded community began to embrace Engelbart’s ideas. However, his own team began to experience technological and social pressures from the continual up grading of the system and the constant adoption of new working methods. As a result, a number of members left SRI and went to work at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The PARC research later inspired Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs to develop the Macintosh with the first commercially successful graphical user interface.

Engelbart continued to work on the Augment system. But, the software ran on big computers and business faded when personal computers proliferated in the 1980s. Today, Engelbart’s vision of using computers continues to evolve. As head of the Bootstrap Institute, he is exploring how to create high-performance human organizations through the use of computer tools. He divides his time between research and development, writing publications, consulting, public speaking, and leading seminars.

Douglas C. Engelbart. Born 1925. Began engineering career at Oregon State College 1942. Received B.S. in electrical engineering,1948. Employed at Ames Research Laboratory in Mountain View, California upon graduation. Engaged 1951 and later married. Attended the University of California at Berkeley and received Ph.D. in 1955 along with half a dozen patents for bistable gaseous plasma digital devices., Accepted a job in October 1957at the Stanford Research Institute and worked there until 1978 when the rights to the Augment computer system was transferred to the Tymeshare Corporation. Worked at the Tymeshare Corporation and continued to develop the system. Founded the Bootstrap Institute 1989 with his daughter Christina.

Barnes, Susan B., "Douglas Carl Engelbart: Developing the Underlying Concepts for Contemporary computing," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 19, no. 3, (1997): 16-26.

Bush, Vannevar, "As We May Think," J.M. Nyce and P. Kahn, eds., From Memex to Hypertext, Boston: Academic Press, 1991.

Engelbart, D.C., "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man’s Intellect," P.W. Howerton and D.C. Weeks, eds., Vistas in Information Handling, vol.1. Washington, D.C. Spartan Books, 1963, 1-29.

Goldberg, Adele. A History of Personal Workstation. New York: ACM Press, 1988

Rheingold, Howard. Tools for Thought. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Susan B. Barnes

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Illustration Notes:

1. A diagram of the H-LAM/T system

2. Images captured from the 1968 video tape of the Engelbart Demonstration, including: mouse and chord keyset, Engelbart demonstrating the system, hypertext links, and teleconferencing.