Timeline of Douglas Engelbart
Douglas Engelbart’s life and work, from his birth in 1925 to his death in 2013: augmenting human intellect, the mouse, collaborative computing, the 1968 demonstration, and the Bootstrap Institute.
- Category
- Engineering & Technology
- Events
- 18 events 1925 – 2013
- Generated
- by gpt-6
1925: Engelbart is born in Oregon
Douglas Carl Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon, on January 30. He grew up near Portland and later studied electrical engineering, a path that led from wartime radar equipment to research on interactive computers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1944: Engelbart joins the United States Navy
Douglas Engelbart interrupted his studies at Oregon State College to join the United States Navy. He trained in radio and radar electronics before deploying to the Philippines in 1945. During that later service, he read Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay "As We May Think," which described a system for connecting and retrieving recorded knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1948: Engelbart graduates and joins Ames Laboratory
Douglas Engelbart completed an electrical engineering degree at Oregon State College and became an engineer at Ames Aeronautical Laboratory. The laboratory belonged to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center1951: Engelbart commits to augmenting human intellect
Douglas Engelbart decided to focus his career on improving humanity’s ability to solve complex problems. He envisioned people working at interactive computer displays and returned to graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue the necessary technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1955: Engelbart earns his doctorate at Berkeley
Douglas Engelbart completed a doctorate in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research concerned computer storage devices, and he briefly taught at Berkeley before moving toward a broader program of computer-assisted intellectual work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1957: Engelbart joins Stanford Research Institute
Douglas Engelbart joined Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California. He initially investigated electronic components and miniaturization while seeking support for research into computers as tools for knowledge workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International1962: Engelbart publishes his augmentation framework
Douglas Engelbart published "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework." The report treated tools, language, methods, and training as an interdependent system and proposed improving them together to help people understand and solve difficult problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification1964: Engelbart’s team builds a mouse prototype
Bill English built a working computer mouse from Douglas Engelbart’s design at Stanford Research Institute. The wooden device translated movement across a surface into cursor movement and was tested alongside other ways of selecting information on a screen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse1968: Engelbart demonstrates interactive collaborative computing
Douglas Engelbart presented his team’s oN-Line System (NLS) on December 9 in San Francisco. The live demonstration combined mouse control, hypertext, document editing, and remote collaboration; it later became known as "The Mother of All Demos."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos1969: Engelbart’s laboratory joins the first ARPANET connection
Douglas Engelbart’s laboratory at Stanford Research Institute became the second node of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). The October 29 connection with the University of California, Los Angeles, linked his collaborative computing research to the emerging network.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET1970: Engelbart receives the mouse patent
Douglas Engelbart received a United States patent for an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System," filed in 1967 and assigned to Stanford Research Institute. The mouse remained one component of his larger system for navigating and editing information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse1977: Engelbart moves his work to Tymshare
Douglas Engelbart joined Tymshare after the company acquired commercial rights to the oN-Line System (NLS). Renamed Augment, the system became an office automation service, moving collaborative computing from a research laboratory into commercial organizations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare1984: Engelbart joins McDonnell Douglas through acquisition
McDonnell Douglas acquired Tymshare, bringing Douglas Engelbart and the Augment system into the aerospace company. Engelbart worked on integrated information systems and ways to improve how large organizations coordinated knowledge and engineering work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1988: Engelbart establishes the Bootstrap Institute
Douglas Engelbart and his daughter Christina Engelbart incorporated the Bootstrap Institute. The organization promoted his approach to improving an organization’s capacity to improve itself, using collaborative tools, shared practices, and alliances between institutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart1997: Engelbart wins the Turing Award
The Association for Computing Machinery selected Douglas Engelbart for the Turing Award. The award recognized his sustained vision of interactive and organizational computing and the technologies developed to put that vision into practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award2000: Engelbart receives the National Medal of Technology
President Bill Clinton awarded Douglas Engelbart the National Medal of Technology. The citation recognized the foundations he had helped establish for personal computing and the commercial use of computers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Technology_and_Innovation2008: Engelbart’s institute adopts his name
The Bootstrap Alliance became the Doug Engelbart Institute, with Christina Engelbart as executive director and Douglas Engelbart as founder emeritus. The organization continued preserving his research and promoting collaborative approaches to complex problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart2013: Engelbart dies in California
Douglas Engelbart died at his home in Atherton, California, on July 2. His research had demonstrated that computing could support shared intellectual work through linked documents, interactive editing, and communication between people at different locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart