Note
Conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the event introduced several historic firsts, including:
The Computer Mouse: Engelbart debuted the mouse, a handheld device for navigating a computer interface, fundamentally changing human-computer interaction.
Interactive Computing: The demo showed real-time interaction with a computer, moving away from batch processing to dynamic, user-driven interfaces.
Hypermedia: It introduced linked text and graphics, a precursor to the hyperlinks that power the internet.
Groupware: The system enabled collaborative computing, allowing multiple users to work together remotely.
Computer-Supported Software Engineering: Tools for collaborative software development were demonstrated.
Video Teleconferencing: The team showcased live video communication, a novel concept at the time.
The 90-minute presentation was filmed across three reels and featured Engelbart in San Francisco interacting with his team 30 miles away at SRI in Menlo Park, using a networked system called the oN-Line System (NLS). The demo was projected on a 22-foot screen, blending live footage, prepared slides, and screen-sharing to illustrate concepts like text editing, hierarchical lists, and hypermedia navigation. This seamless integration of technologies was unprecedented, earning the event its iconic name.
The demo was produced by SRI International and re-mastered in 2022 by Stanford Libraries Special Collections from the original film reels into a high-quality 1550p version. It is available on the Doug Engelbart Institute’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/channel/UCQlw4AaxouHkUELUq9_YmGA) as a three-part playlist (youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCGFadV4FqU3flMPLg36d8RFQW65bWsnP). Additional resources, including detailed documentation and Engelbart’s broader vision, are available at dougengelbart.org.
Engelbart’s work aimed to augment human intellect, focusing on tools to enhance collective problem-solving. The "Mother of All Demos" is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in computing history, influencing the development of personal computing, the internet, and modern user interfaces.