Game-changing computer demo captured in new show
Source: Karen

Mikel Rouse stands in front of an exhibit about Douglas Engelbart at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on March 26, 2015. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

In the span of 100 minutes on Dec. 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart became a tech legend.

The inventor and engineer unveiled such revolutionary inventions as the computer mouse, hyperlinks and the video teleconference during a presentation that would come to be known as "the mother of all demos." Not only did it dazzle its assembled audience at San Francisco's Fall Joint Computer Conference, it also shaped the course of human-computer interaction.

More than 40 years later, when avant-garde composer Ben Neill stumbled on a story of the groundbreaking speech, he was struck by how theatrical it seemed. Now Engelbart's big day is the inspiration for "The Demo," a multimedia piece blending electronic music, performance and video. It makes its world premiere Wednesday and Thursday as part of the Stanford Live performance series.



An exhibit about inventor Douglas Engelbart displays an early prototype of the computer mouse at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on March 26, 2015. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

It's a watershed moment in Silicon Valley history coming full circle at Stanford, where Engelbart first glimpsed the future of personal computing at what was then known as the Stanford Research Institute. That was his home base when he invented the mouse.

"He was dealing lightning that day," says composer Mikel Rouse, who co-created "The Demo" with Neill. "Nobody had ever seen anything like that before. They (presenters) emulated everything the Internet would be, from Skype to Google Chat."

Engelbart, who grew up in Portland and got his doctorate in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley, was never satisfied with the status quo. The computer visionary, a former naval radar technician, saw technology as a tool for "augmenting human intellect."
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He dedicated himself to "boosting mankind's capability for coping with complex, urgent problems."

But until that fateful demo, many in the industry regarded him as a crackpot. Computers were then seen as bulky, impractical behemoths that only interested punch-card wielding nerds. No one dreamed of an elegant device that would become an integral part of everyday life. Few could appreciate Engelbart's egalitarian vision for technology as a means to share knowledge and connect people. He didn't want computers to make him rich, he wanted them to change the world.

"He was a man on a crusade," agrees Neill. "He was a real heroic character, and he persevered through so much rejection, so many people calling him crazy."

That 100-minute presentation changed all that. About 1,000 people gathered at San Francisco's Convention Center to watch Engelbart click the first mouse, a clunky contraption made of wood that rolled on metal wheels, video chat with his colleagues in Menlo Park through an online network, and speak of the power of technology to change the way we live.

"The heart of his goal was that he wanted people to be able to work together and collaborate," says Bill English, a Stanford-trained engineer who worked with Engelbart. It was English who built the first mouse. "Those are the building blocks for the Internet."

Engelbart's innovations were so prescient that most people did not realize how useful they would be until much later. Indeed, his pivotal demo was 13 years before the dawn of the IBM personal computer and 15 years before the game-changing first Mac.

"They were so far ahead of their time that it must have seemed like science fiction," notes Rouse.

Ironically, English had to persuade Engelbart to even do a demonstration instead of merely presenting a paper at the conference.

"I told him you couldn't just describe something like this," recalls English, with a chuckle, "you had to show it."

An exhibit about inventor Douglas Engelbart displays an early prototype of the computer mouse at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on March 26, 2015. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group)

By the 1970s, as tech wizards such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs began to dominate pop culture, Engelbart's contributions to the dotcom age were largely forgotten. One of the fathers of personal computing found himself having to fight for funding dollars even as the digital gold rush he helped create swept through Silicon Valley.

"People today sit down at the computer without thinking about who started it all," notes English. "They don't think about who first had the idea."

Only recently has the impact of his discoveries been fully appreciated. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology. By time he died in 2013 at his home in Atherton at the age of 88, the Internet pioneer had seen the whole world influenced by the force of his imagination.

Sadly, Engelbart never received any royalties for his mouse invention. And toward the end of his life, he also had misgivings about the way in which his innovations were evolving, such as the way people ended up bonded to their phones but isolated from each other.

"He had a utopian vision for computers and the Internet," says Neill, "and that didn't materialize."