Quote from Personal">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/391203_pc4009.html]Personal computer debuted 40 years ago to an awed crowd

By CHARLES BURRESS
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

It was 40 years ago that a San Francisco stage featured the first public glimpse of an invention that would revolutionize not only our daily lives, but also our ability to solve the world's problems.

The Dec. 9, 1968, unveiling of the primitive device with a mouse and interactive screen -- in a now-legendary demonstration by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute -- drew a rousing, standing ovation from the computing cognoscenti who recognized the significance of what they had just seen.

The machine raised hopes of solving a major modern quandary -- how to navigate the world's rapidly accumulating and increasingly complex store of information.

That year's fledgling efforts to navigate the physical universe in spaceships seemed ponderous and slow compared with the prospect of speeding through the universe of information in the digital ships promised by the new computers.

The invention featured rudimentary windows and hyperlinks that allowed jumping from one document to another, as well as the ability to edit text and add graphics on a video monitor. The presentation offered a peek at future computer networks that would become the Internet.

"No one has ever before or since seen such a collection of great ideas in one demonstration," said Curt Carlson, SRI president and chief executive.

The event -- dubbed "the mother of all demos" by chroniclers of the computer industry and Silicon Valley -- is being commemorated on its 40th anniversary Tuesday at Stanford University in an afternoon program including Engelbart and some of the other pioneers who worked with him.

The 1968 demonstration was years before anyone dreamed of Microsoft Corp. or Apple.

"Bill Gates was 12 at the time; Steve Jobs was 13," writes John Naughton in his book "A Brief History of the Future."

Though Engelbart may not have achieved the fame of Gates or Jobs, his profound influence is widely acknowledged in the field.

Engelbart is "the Moses of computers," writes Steven Levy in his history of the Macintosh.

His 1968 demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference held in the convention center at Civic Center -- featuring Engelbart in tie and short-sleeved shirt at his computer terminal in front of a large video screen -- may seem tame and quaint to today's audiences accustomed to high-tech special effects.

But at the time, when computers were glorified calculators as big as cars and operating on punch cards, it was "just mind-blowing," recalled Bob Taylor, of Woodside, who helped guide the computer industry's evolution and who, having seen the value of what Engelbart and his team wanted to do, provided much of the needed financing in his role as a program manager first at NASA and then at the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project's Agency.

"For many who witnessed it," writes John Markoff in his book "What the Dormouse Said," about the development of the personal computer, "it was more than a bolt out of the blue: It was a religious experience."

"The standing ovation surprised all of us," recalled Bill English, of Novato, the SRI engineer who orchestrated the event, which featured Engelbart not only operating the computer, but also engaging in shared-screen teleconferencing with colleagues back at SRI headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. (Playing a supporting role behind the camera in Menlo Park was counterculture hero Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog.)

English is known also as the person who built the first mouse in 1964. It consisted of a small pine box equipped with a red clicker button on top and two wheels placed at right angles underneath that regulated the electric current that moved the cursor, then called the "bug."

No one is sure who on the small team coined the term "mouse" for the little box with a wire coming out, English said. But the name stuck once it was introduced.

"A small box with a tail coming out -- you might as well call it a mouse," said English, who figured out how to construct the device based on a sketch that Engelbart had drawn in 1961.

But Engelbart resisted being known as the man who invented the mouse, Taylor said.

"He was focused not on computing technology per se," Taylor said. "He was focused on how to better deal with information -- how to better arrange it, how to be able to sift through it, how to be able to communicate it to other people. He was not a gadget guy."