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Table of Contents
American engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart was best known for pioneering the field of human-computer interaction, which resulted in the creation of the computer mouse and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and forerunners to graphical user interfaces.
See the fact file below for more information on the Douglas Engelbart or alternatively, you can download our 21-page Douglas Engelbart worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.
Key Facts & Information
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
- Born on January 30, 1925, in Portland, Oregon, Douglas Carl Engelbart was the middle of three children to Carl Louis Engelbart and Gladys Charlotte Amelia Munson Engelbart.
- His family stayed in Portland in his childhood, and they moved to the countryside along Johnson Creek when he reached the age of 8. His father died when he was 9.
- In 1942, he graduated from Portland’s Franklin High School.
- Halfway through his undergraduate days at Oregon State University, Douglas served two years in the United States Navy as a radio and radar technician based in the Philippines, where he drew inspiration from Vannevar Bush’s article “As We May Think”. In 1948, he went back to Oregon State to finish his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
- Douglas landed a job in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Ames Research Center, where he worked in wind tunnel maintenance.
- Years after his marriage, Douglas left Ames to attend graduate studies at the University of California in Berkeley, where he got his master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1953 and his doctorate degree in 1955.
MARRIAGE
- It was at the Ames Research Center where he met Ballard Fish, who was still completing her training as an occupational therapist. They got married in Portola State Park on May 5, 1951.
- In January 2008, he married writer and producer Karen O’Leary.
CAREER BEGINNINGS
- His career was inspired in December 1950 when he got engaged to Fish and realized his mantra, which was to obtain “a steady job, get married, and live happily ever after.”
- Over a number of months, his guiding philosophies were: (1) to focus on his career and making the world a better place to live in, (2) to exert serious effort to make the world better, which would require some kind of systematized resolution that controlled the human mind in contributing feasible solutions, (3) to ponder on the improvement of solutions in solving important problems on the planet, and (4) to realize that computers could act as vehicles for improving solutions.
- During his days as a radar technician, he knew that information could be examined and shown on screen, predicting intellectual workers sitting at display “working stations”, hovering and wandering through information space, mobilizing their collective intellectual capacity to resolve significant problems in efficient means.
- Utilizing collective intellect that was expedited by interactive computers seemed to be his life’s mission in an era when computers were seen as number-crunching devices.
- After finishing his doctorate, Douglas remained at Berkeley as an assistant professor for a year before leaving and forming his own startup company, Digital Techniques, which aimed to commercialize some of his doctoral studies on storage devices.
CONTRIBUTIONS
- SRI and the Augmentation Research Center. In 1957, Douglas worked at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, under Hewitt Crane on magnetic devices and miniaturization of electronics, where he and Crane became close friends. At SRI, he soon got a dozen patents, and in 1962, he proposed research titled Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, which led to the funding of ARPA to kickstart his work. Douglas formed a research team in his new Augmentation Research Center (ARC) lab, where he instilled a number of organizing principles he referred to as “bootstrapping strategy”, which was designed to advance the rate of innovation. He and his team created computer interface elements such as bitmapped screens, the mouse, hypertext, collaborative tools, and precursors to the graphical user interface (GUI). In 1967, he applied for a patent for a wooden shell with two metal wheels, known as the computer mouse, which he invented with the help of his lead engineer Bill English. Douglas disclosed that this device was labeled the “mouse” because the tail came out at the end, and his team named the on-screen cursor a “bug”.
- Tymshare and McDonnell Douglas. Douglas shifted to different perspective, and some of his researchers became detached from him and left his organization for Xerox PARC, a research and development company in California tasked with creating computer-related products and hardware systems. He envisioned the future in collaborative, networked, timeshare (client-server) computers, which were dismissed by younger programs in favor of the personal computer.
- McDonnell showed interest in Douglas’ ideas but never funded those or asked people to develop them. Douglas retired from McDonnell’s company in 1986, realizing he wanted to pursue his work away from commercial pressure.
- Bootstrap and the Doug Engelbart Institute. Together with his daughter, Christina Engelbart, Douglas established the Bootstrap Institute in 1988 to combine his ideas into a series of three-day and half-day management talks offered at Stanford University from 1988 to 2000. He also became the Founder Emeritus of the Doug Engelbart Institute, which he formed in 1988 with his daughter, who is the Executive Director. This institute aims to empower his philosophy for improving Collective IQ – the concept of enhancing how we can resolve significant problems – using a systematic and strategic bootstrapping method for expediting progress towards the goal.
REMAINING YEARS
- He attended the Program for the Future 2010 Conference at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California, and even started an online dialog on how to seek his vision to augment collective intelligence.
- The full coverage of his bootstrapping ideas can be seen in Boosting Our Collective IQ, by Douglas C. Engelbart, 1955, which included three of his key papers.
- He also served on the Advisory Boards of the University of Santa Clara Center for Science, Technology, and Society, Foresight Institute, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, The Technology Center of Silicon Valley, and The Liquid Information Company.
- Douglas had four children, Gerda, Diana, Christina, and Norman, with Ballard, who died in 1997 after 47 years of marriage.
- On July 2, 2013, he died at his home in Atherton, California, due to kidney failure, which was caused after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, which he was diagnosed six years prior.
Douglas Engelbart Worksheets
This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about the Douglas Engelbart across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Douglas Engelbart worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Douglas Engelbart who was best known for pioneering the field of human-computer interaction, which resulted in the creation of the computer mouse and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and forerunners to graphical user interfaces.
Complete List Of Included Worksheets
- Douglas Engelbart Facts
- Man of the Mouse
- Fact Check
- His Invention
- Types of Computer Mouse
- All About Those Links
- Pioneers of Modern Computing
- Contact Tracing GUI
- A Letter To Engelbart
- Your Own Invention
- Quote From Engelbart
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