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This week The Demo turns 55! Welcome to theDemo.org â our main portal into Doug's great demo of 1968 where you will find stories, archive footage and photos, and links to other fabulous resources at Stanford Libraries Special Collections, SRI International, Computer History Museum and more. Experience the demo, and watch retrospectives by Doug and his team recounting their experience.
Now a 'milestone event' in the On December 9th, 1968 Doug Engelbart appeared on stage at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco's Civic Auditorium to give his slated presentation, titled "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect." He and his team spent the next 90 minutes not only telling about their work, but demonstrating it live to a spellbound audience that filled the hall. Instead of standing at a podium, Doug was seated at a custom designed console, where he drove the presentation through their NLS computer residing 30 miles away in his research lab at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), onto a large projection screen overhead, flipping seamlessly between his presentation outline and live demo of features, while members of his research lab video teleconferenced in from SRI in shared screen mode to demonstrate more of the system. Masterminding the whole production was lead engineer Bill English. As the session came to a close, the audience erupted into a standing ovation. This seminal demonstration came to be known as "The Mother of All Demos." What you are about to see - watch futurist Paul Saffo que up the demo for a live audience at the 30th anniversary event (more below). WATCH THE FOOTAGE 2a |
AND MORE 2b
Memorabilia: See the Session Poster announcing Doug's presentation, his go-to archive photos at his History in Pix, and our photo gallery of the Demo project on Facebook.
Conference Proceedings: Read the paper by Doug and his team that accompanied their presentation: A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, published in the Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference. Check out the conference proceedings Table of Contents to see who all was presenting what [browseable at ACM Library].
What were they thinking?: The story of the demo is as fascinating as the demo itself. Why did they do it, how did they do it, what was it like behind the scenes, who was in the audience, how was it received? Check out Reflecting on the Demo below to hear Doug and his team's reflections, and read Adam Fischer's How Doug Engelbart Pulled off the Mother of All Demos. See Colleagues, Press, and Presidents for more.
Online Exhibits: Explore the MouseSite at Stanford for stories, archive video, photos, and key technical papers from the Douglas C. Engelbart Collection at Stanford Libraries Special Collections.
See SRI's Timeline on Innovation: Computer Mouse and Interactive Computing for concise background and overall significance of the demo.
Browse the virtual exhibits showcasing Doug's work at the Computer History Museum.
NEW! Learn about Doug's collaboration with Herman-Miller Research, pioneers of the office of the future, who produced the custom swivel console and Eames chair used in the demo.
See also the 1968 Demo Table of Contents which links to specific sections of the Demo, the Detailed Onscreen Outline, and a draft transcript of the Demo.
Most of what Doug and his team presented in 1968 was developed literally "from scratch" by a handful of researchers in the space of roughly 2 years. The system, called NLS, was used day in and day out by the research team for almost every aspect of their work â they were living and breathing the organization of the future and the future of work as an advanced pilot expedition, pushing the envelope of intelligence augmentation and collective IQ with transformative practices and paradigms alongside the rapidly evolving technology, using a special evolutionary bootstrap approach (watch Doug describe the approach during the demo). He reasoned that organizations would have to get alot more effective at tackling wicked problems, especially as we moved into a future of accelerated change and disruption at a scale never before experienced by business or society (yes, he predicted this in 1960 and adapted his strategic vision accordingly). The demo was essentially a snapshot in time on a continuum of cross-cutting breakthrough innovation in which they were rigorously prototyping the fast, fluid organization of the future, while co-evolving the technology in the service of that. See Historic Firsts for more, as well as the Engelbart Academy for his prescient call to action. 3a
â
The demo was essentially a
â Christina Engelbart, Executive Director
Learn more about the making of the demo, the system being demonstrated, the team that made it happen, how and why it was conceived and evolved, its significance, and what it was like working in Doug's innovative lab at that point in time. 4a
Doug and His Team 4b
Anniversary Events
Some fabulous anniversary events were later held to commemorate the demo, with panel discussions by Doug, members of his research team who participated in the 1968 demo, and invited guests discussing what it took to put on the demo that day, what it was like behind the scenes, and the significance of the work they were doing then and now.
âbecause the extraordinary thing is,
even with the events that were demonstrated
â Paul Saffo, Futurist
The 50th Anniversary of
Oral Histories
Colleagues, Press, and Presidents 4c
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Watch President Obama cite Engelbart and the 1968 demo |
Watch the other speakers and panelists reflecting on the 1968 Demo at the above events, luminaries such as Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Ted Nelson, Alan Kay, Andy van Dam, Bob Taylor, Curt Carlson, Howard Rheingold, John Markoff, Paul Saffo, Bob Sproull, Denise Caruso, Chuck House, and more [30th Anniv. Sessions | 40th Anniv Sessions | 50th Anniv. Sessions]. 4c1
See also this mid-1990s description of the demo by Brown University Center for Graphics and Visualization, Douglas Engelbart and 'The Mother of All Demos'. Andy van Dam, a principal investigator at the Center, attended the 1968 demo and was a guest speaker at all our Anniversary events. 4c3
PRESS: The big 50th anniversary events inspired some great press -- see Demo Press for a sampling. NEW! A Machine for Thinking: How Douglas Engelbart Predicted the Future of Computing, by Steven Johnson for Netguru's Hidden Heroes series. Watch the Stanford News report (3 min). See also top picks from 50th Anniv. Press, 40th Anniv. Press, and 30th Anniv. Press. Browse our Press Newsroom for a more comprehensive collection of articles dating back in time. 4c2
AWARDS: For his "most unusual contribution" to the success of the 1968 conference program, Doug Engelbart was awarded by the conference program organizers a hand carved tribute to his Demo, pictured at left. In recognition for achievements first showcased at the 1968 Demo, Doug Engelbart later received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the IEEE John Von Neumann Medal Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the A.M. Turing Award, the Lemelson-MIT Prize, and the American Ingenuity Award. See Honors Awarded to Doug Engelbart for more on these and other awards.
Inspired Artistic Creations 4d
The Mother of All Demos: An Animated Commentary
In 2009 a Freshman at Baylor University by the name of Philip Heinrich produced an impressive 5 minute video capturing the essence of Doug's goals and vision, combining audio from the 1968 demo with his own animation, which he titled "The Mother of All Demos: An Animated Commentary". Read about the project, the student, and the course and professor he produced it for on our Student Showcase page which includes links to the video on YouTube and to other projects he has authored.
'The Demo' now an avant garde opera at Stanford
Stanford Live presents an avant garde opera 'The Demo', a musical/video/lightshow reimagining the 1968 "Mother of All Demos" originally presented by Doug Engelbart and his team just down the road at Stanford Research Institute for the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, December 1968. [Details|Press|Reviews].
On the Web 5a
- Visit Historic Firsts - for more of Doug Engelbart's many groundbreaking firsts. 5a1
- Visit the Stanford MouseSite - a definitive website on the 1968 Demo hosted by Stanford University. 5a2
- "The Mother of All Demos" (90 min Video/Film) Doug's 1968 debut of NLS (Augment's precursor) including hypermedia, the mouse, collaborative work, interactive computing, human computer interface, and overarching guiding principles. See especially Clip 12 where Doug, sitting in San Francisco, brings in a coworker sitting in his lab in Menlo Park, to demonstrate the mouse, and Clip 13 where Doug introduces the keyset. 5a3
From Doug's Lab5b
- A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect. (the paper written for the conference where they gave the demo, describing the work they were demoing). Douglas C. Engelbart and William K. English, AFIPS Conference Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, CA, 33, December 1968, pp. 395-410 (AUGMENT,3954,). Republished with articles No. 4, 21, and 23 in "Computer Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of Readings," Irene Greif [Ed.], Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., San Mateo, CA, 1988, pp. 81-105. See also Engelbart's videotaped presentation from this historic 1968 conference "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect." 5b1
- Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. (Doug's seminal report documenting his strategic vision that drove the work) Douglas C. Engelbart, Summary Report, Stanford Research Institute, on Contract AF 49(638)-1024, October 1962, 134 pages (AUGMENT,133182,). 5b2
- Workstation History and The Augmented Knowledge Workshop. Douglas C. Engelbart, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on the History of Personal Workstations, Palo Alto, CA, January 9-10, 1986, pp. 73-83 (AUGMENT,101931,). Republished as The Augmented Knowledge Workshop in "A History of Personal Workstations," Adele Goldberg [Ed.], ACM Press, New York, 1988, pp. 185-236. 5b3