Douglas Engelbart had invented a number of interactive, user-friendly information access systems before the era of the information systems that we take for granted today: the computer mouse, windows, shared-screen teleconferencing, hypermedia, groupware, and more.

Douglas C. Engelbart Credit: invent.org

Engelbart's inventions were ahead of their time, but have been integrated into mainstream computing as industry capabilities have increased. It was not until 1984 that the Apple Macintosh popularized the mouse; but today it is difficult to imagine a personal computer without one. And the huge success of Microsoft's Windows95 proves that Engelbart's original windows concept has also become a virtual necessity. In a recent talk delivered at MIT (June 1996), Bill Gates himself praised Engelbart for his pioneering work. Byte magazine, in an article honoring the 20 persons who have had the greatest impact on personal computing (September 1995), went so far as to say of Engelbart: "Comparisons with Thomas Edison do not seem farfetched . . ."

Engelbart now works out of the Bootstrap Institute, which he founded, where he is an inventor and a consultant in multiple-user business computing. His current focus is on a type of groupware called a "open hyperdocument system," which may one day replace paper recordkeeping entirely.