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Computer genius and inventor of the mouse dies aged 88

DOUG Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse, has died aged 88 of acute
kidney failure after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

The computer genius developed his famous devise in the 1960s using wood with
metal wheels as an “X-Y pointer”.

Curtis R. Carlson, the CEO of SRI International where Engelbart used to work
said: “We will miss his genius, warmth and charm.”



He added: “Doug’s legacy is immense. Anyone in the world who uses a mouse or

Years ahead of his time, Engelbart also worked on early versions of word
processing, email and the internet.

As a young US professor, academic bosses had warned him about his “wild ideas”
— and operating a computer with a tool on the outside was unheard of at the

Despite more than a billion of his inventions being sold, he never made much
money from the mouse because the patent ran out in 1987 – before it became
widely used.

Marc Weber, founder and curator at the Computer History Museum where Engelbart
had been a fellow since 2005, said: “There are only a handful of people who
were as influential.”

He added: “He had a complete vision of what computers could become at a very
early stage.”

Long before Apple founder Steve Jobs became famous for his dramatic
presentations, Engelbart dazzled the industry at a San Francisco computer
conference in 1968.

A picture file of the co-founder and chairman of Apple Computers Steve Jobs, pictured in London with the new model they are about to put on the market


Working from his house with a homemade modem, he used his lab’s elaborate new
online system to illustrate his ideas to the audience.

It was the first public demonstration of the mouse and video teleconferencing
and it prompted a standing ovation.



In 1950, when mainframe computers took up entire rooms and were fed data on
punch cards, Engelbart was already envisioning a day when computers were
more intuitive to use.

Apple’s then revolutionary Macintosh computer.