The Mother of All Demos

The underlying concepts and technologies influenced both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows graphical user interface operating systems in the 1980s and 1990s.

In its wake, scientists and technologists had begun to fan out around the globe, seeking to use their knowledge to eradicate disease and increase food production, often in an effort to win the cold war loyalties of Third World nations.

[5] Over the course of six years, with the funding help of both NASA and ARPA,[6] his team went about putting together all the elements that would make such a computer system a reality.

At the urging of ARPA's director, Robert Taylor, the NLS would make its first public appearance at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco's Civic Auditorium.

[9] Notable attendees in the audience included Alan Kay, Charles Irby and Andy van Dam,[10] as well as Bob Sproull.

[Note 2] In order to provide live two-way video between the lab and the conference hall, two microwave links were used.

The camera operator in Menlo Park was Stewart Brand, who at the time was a non-computer person, best known as the editor of the Whole Earth Catalog.

[16][Note 3] At separate times, his Augment associates Jeff Rulifson and Bill Paxton appeared in another portion of the screen to help edit the text remotely from ARC.

As the 1970s started, much of Engelbart's team departed ARC and went their own ways, with many of them ending up at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

[16] By 1973, the Xerox Alto was a fully functional personal computer similar to the NLS terminal which Engelbart had demonstrated in 1968, but much smaller and physically refined.

[1] Engelbart's influence peaked at the conference, and he was mostly remembered throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s as the inventor of the mouse and hypertext, famously adapted by Apple and Microsoft.

On the demo's 30th anniversary in 1998, Stanford University held a major conference to celebrate Engelbart's visionary impact on computing and the World Wide Web.