Most PC owners hardly know the name of Douglas Carl Engelbart. However, this omission does not prevent almost 1 billion people from using his creations every day, the most popular of which is a computer mouse.
On January 30, 1925, near Portland, Oregon, a family of ordinary hardworking farmers appeared on the account of a boy. The boy is like a boy: he went to school, after which he entered a local university, aiming for a diploma of electrician engineer.
But suddenly the Second World War confused all the plans, defining the young Douglas on the Philippine naval base of the radio technician. Destiny has already defined away far from Douglas's technique then, having put under his nose Atlantic Monthly magazine with the cult article of the known American scientist in the field of IT and computer science Vannevar Bush "How fast we can think".
The author of the article was quite interestingly discussing the difference between the structure of human memory and external data carriers. He described his own hypothetical photoelectromechanical machine Memex, the place of which is rather in a science fiction film than in our reality. However, the theory of animation of inanimate nature turned out to be contagious, and Engelbart seriously thought about the prospect of using the most complex army equipment in a peaceful life.
Back from the war, Engelbart returned to his home country for a diploma, from where he was taken to the NACA laboratory (later NASA) to work as an electrical engineer. Having received a stable source of income, Douglas finally moved to California, where he spends most of his time at the laboratory. The rest of his time, however, is spent at the University of Berkeley (where Free BSD was created) because he understands that ideas for artificial intelligence require a strong scientific foundation.
In 1955, he successfully graduated with a Ph.D. in his field and left NACA to get closer to his dream of being closer to computers. Dr. Engelbart becomes the right hand of a university professor of electrical engineering to acquire the necessary skills. In the same year, he was involved in a multi-year project called CALDIC (California Digital Computer), which was funded by the military. It is easy to understand that Berkeley has developed a supercomputer.
A year later, he moved to the Stanford Research Institute and at the same time, for the first time, tried to commercialize his work. Over the next four years, the inventor patented seven bistable gas-plasma digital devices and 12 magnetic devices. In particular, those that were born in preparation for a doctoral degree. But they could not be sold.
Without despair, Douglas, together with engineer Hewitt Crane, develops magnetic computer components and conducts fundamental research into the phenomenon of digital devices and their potential miniaturization. Engelbart's persistence and passion have once again made a difference.
At Stanford, they softened up and helped the young scientist set up his laboratory and staff of up to 47 people. Douglas Engelbart is subjecting people who want to take part in his projects to a fairly brutal selection process.
Douglas Engelbart's crazy devotion to his work was bound to lead to positive results. That's what happened - Douglas expanded the areas in which his laboratory, then known as the Augmentation Research Center, and the On-Line-System, or NLS, working environment. NLS is a computer system that includes a fundamentally new operating system, a universal programming language, e-mail, split screens for teleconferences, and a contextual help system.
Shortly before that, Engelbart wrote an article entitled "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man's Intellect", which describes the H-LAM/T (Human Using Language, Artifacts and Methodology, in which he is Trained) system.
The essence of this description was that in a couple of people - a machine user to be assigned the role of the leader (creative component), and the computer acts as an assistant (symbiosis of dynamic components), strengthening the natural intelligence of man.
The project was unique in that already at that time (in the 60s!) it contained a system of contextual help, e-mail, teleconferences, hypertext links, online text editing, and window interface. It was the first-ever working hypertext system. The mainframe of Engelbart's laboratory was the second computer connected to the then waiting military network ARPAnet - the direct ancestor of the modern Internet.