Born on January 30, 1925 in Oregon. Inventor of the computer mouse, pioneer of human-computer interaction, including graphical user interface, hypertext, and networked computers. Douglas C. Engelbart was the primary force behind the design of the Stanford Research Institute's On-Line System, or NLS. He received a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Oregon State University in 1948, a Bachelor of Engineering degree from UC Berkeley in 1952, and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1955.
As a World War II radio tech based in the Philippines, Engelbart was inspired by Vannevar Bush's article 'As We May Think'. After the war, following his inspiration, Engelbart quit his job as an engineer, and studied at UC Berkeley, where he got a PhD in 1955, and worked on the earliest version of the Internet, called the ARPANet. He and the team he led at his Augmentation Research Center developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, multiple windows, groupware, and the graphical user interface. He also invented the world's first computer mouse. He developed many of these ideas back in 1968, long before the personal computer revolution. He continues (at age 78 in 2003) to work at the Bootstrap Institute, which he founded.
He never received any royalties for his mouse invention.
In 1997 he was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize, and the Turing Award. In 2001 he was awarded a British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal.
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