If you use a mouse, hyperlinks, video conferencing, WYSIWYG word processor, multi-window user interface, shared documents, shared database, documents with images & text, keyword search, instant messaging, synchronous collaboration, asynchronous collaboration — thank Doug Engelbart

That quote is from one of Engelbart’s peers. It’s worth taking a few minutes to read the rest of his post, to learn about Doug Engelbart. Personal computing and the internet would not be what they are if it weren’t for his contributions.

About 14 years ago, when Maria and I worked at Stanford, we had dinner with him and his girlfriend, and another couple. He couldn’t have been more pleasant and down to earth. At the time I knew a bit about his history, but not the full extent of his contributions. And I left that dinner still not knowing – he was a modest man. Dave Crocker is someone who worked with him, and he wrote the following last night, after Engelbart’s daughter shared the news of his passing: “Besides the considerable technical contributions of Doug’s project at SRI, theirs was a group that did much to create the open and collaborative tone of the Internet that we’ve come to consider as automatic and natural, but were unusual in those days.”

The San Jose Mercury today re-published a profile of him from 1999:

But the mild-mannered computer scientist who created the computer mouse, windows-style personal computing, hyperlinking–the clickable links used in the World Wide Web–even e-mail and video conferencing, was ridiculed and shunted aside. For much of his career he was treated as a heretic by the industry titans who ultimately made billions off his inventions…

Engelbart is perhaps the most dramatic example of the valley’s habit of forgetting engineers whose brilliance helped build companies–and entire industries. CEOs fail to mention them in corporate press releases; they never become household names. Yet we use their products, or the fruits of their ideas, every day…

“We were doing this for humanity. It would never occur to us to try and cash in on it. That’s still where Doug’s mind is,” explains Rulifson, director of Sun’s Networking and Security Center…

Engelbart’s unwillingness to bend was in evidence when he met Steve Jobs for the first time in the early 1980s. It was 15 years since Engelbart had invented the computer mouse and other critical components for the personal computer, and Jobs was busy integrating them into his Macintosh.

Apple Computer Inc.’s hot-shot founder touted the Macintosh’s capabilities to Engelbart. But instead of applauding Jobs, who was delivering to the masses Engelbart’s new way to work, the father of personal computing was annoyed. In his opinion, Jobs had missed the most important piece of his vision: networking. Engelbart’s 1968 system introduced the idea of networking personal computer workstations so people could solve problems collaboratively. This was the whole point of the revolution.

“I said, ‘It [the Macintosh] is terribly limited. It has no access to anyone else’s documents, to e-mail, to common repositories of information, “‘ recalls Engelbart. “Steve said, ‘All the computing power you need will be on your desk top.”‘

“I told him, ‘But that’s like having an exotic office without a telephone or door.”‘ Jobs ignored Engelbart. And Engelbart was baffled.

We’d been using electronic mail since 1970 [over the government-backed ARPA network, predecessor to the Internet]. But both Apple and Microsoft Corp. ignored the network. You have to ask ‘Why?”‘ He shrugs his shoulders, a practiced gesture after 30 frustrating years…

Here is a set of highlights from his famous 1968 demo of the systems his team developed, showing early versions of computer software and hardware we now consider commonplace. In the 8th video, he shows their online, collaborative document editing system, which looks like an early version of Google Docs. In the 3rd video, he describes the empirical and evolutionary approach they took to their development process. This was another of his ideas that the industry discarded, only to finally re-discover its value, more than 30 years later, as what’s now called Agile development.