The Mother-of-All-Demos

On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart's demo displayed a whole new way of computing and unveiled the computer mouse to the world! I cannot imagine a world without any of these things.

Best remembered as the demo that introduced the world to the computer mouse, it was actually a moment when Engelbart and his team of researchers unveiled a whole new way of computing -- one that looked more like what we do in 2008 than like the punch-card-driven work that was standard back in the 60s.
The mother of all demos, which today feels like a too-long scene in a classic science fiction movie, marked the debut of both hypertext links and on-screen text editing, and it even married computing with video teleconferencing.

Engelbart's vision, stated at the time has become common place:

In the video from 1968, before starting his demo Engelbart briefly describes his vision of computing. "If, in your office, you, as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly ... responsive to every action that you had, how much value could you derive from that?" he asks.

This is the basis of the internet and the whole Information Technology industry!


A 40-year-old computer demo that still amazes | Hardware - InfoWorld