Engelbart, inventor of computer mouse, dies at 88
Engelbart developed mouse in 1960s, patented it in 1970, but device was not commercially available until 1984 with Apple’s Macintosh computer
The first computer mouse was a wooden shell with metal wheels. The man behind it, tech visionary Doug Engelbart, has died at 88 after transforming the way people work, play and communicate.
His death of acute kidney failure occurred at his California home after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, according to one of his daughters, Diana Engelbart Mangan.
The mild-mannered Engelbart had audacious ideas. Long before Apple founder Steve Jobs became famous for his dramatic presentations, Engelbart dazzled the industry at a San Francisco computer conference in 1968.
Working from his house with a homemade modem, he used his lab’s elaborate new online system to illustrate his ideas to the audience, while his staff linked in from the lab. It was the first public demonstration of the mouse and video teleconferencing, and it prompted a standing ovation.
“We will miss his genius, warmth and charm,” said Curtis R. Carlson, the chief executive of SRI International, where Engelbart used to work. “Doug’s legacy is immense. Anyone in the world who uses a mouse or enjoys the productive benefits of a personal computer is indebted to him.”
Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, when mainframe computers took up entire rooms and were fed data on punch cards, Engelbart already was envisioning a day when computers were far more intuitive to use.
