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The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)

Marcel · 1.2M views · 2012-07-09 · 1:40:53

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Overview

The full recording of Douglas Engelbart's 1968 demonstration, which introduced the mouse, hypertext, video conferencing, word processing, and real-time collaborative editing. It runs about 100 minutes.

On Hacker News

HN treats it as an essential piece of computing history that shows how many modern interface ideas were already solved in 1968.

Recommended by 8 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2013–2026

Topics

GUI, HCI & interface historyHistory of computingTech pioneers & interviews
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douglas engelbartmother of all demoshypertextmousecollaborative editinghuman-computer interaction

What people said

mftb · 2022-06 · Strong recommendation

Always glad to see this getting attention, I really enjoy computing history. There's a link to a video in the article, but it's part three of ten. Recently I came across this[0]. It's pretty much the whole thing in one video. It's long but it's well worth the watch. I was born in '68, so I can't remember the 60s, but I can remember the 70s and it's easy for me to understand why people felt Engelbart was, "Dealing lightning with both hands" at the Mother of All Demos. [0] [VIDEO]

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kbumsik · 2020-08 · Strong recommendation

I was so surprised when I watched "The Mother of All Demos" from 50+ years ago (1968) and saw what they predicted and actually implemented. They demonstrated what's happening in 2020, video conferencing, real time collaborative word processing, and etc. Truly amazing. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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otras · 2018-10 · Strong recommendation

The Mother Of All Demos is an absolute classic: [VIDEO] [LINK] I also very much enjoy Feynman’s talks. Here’s one on imagining physics: [LINK] For computer science in particular, I highly recommend the first lecture in the SICP series, especially on the naming of so called “computer science”: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Marcel, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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