Douglas Engelbart was the inventor behind the now commonplace computer mouse, and other user-friendly information systems, such as the concept of windows, teleconferencing, and groupware. He also devised one of the first systems of hypermedia, which now powers the world wide web.

At a computer conference in San Fransisco in 1968 Engelbart amazed his co-workers by demonstrating a mouse and the concept of windows, running off a mainframe computer that was miles away. Engelbart has been awarded more than 20 patents, the most notable for his "X-Y Positing Indicator" commonly called the computer mouse.

However, Engelbart's inventions were ahead of their time. The mouse had to wait for Steve Job's invention of the Apple Macintosh computer, and the sucess of Microsoft's Windows operating system for personal computers is also reliant on Engelbart's invention of the concept of computer windows.