This is a very old article. It has been imported from older blogging software, and the formatting, images, etc may have been lost. Some links may be broken. Some of the information may no longer be correct. Opinions expressed in this article may no longer be held.
It was 40 years ago today that Douglas Engelbart gave a demonstration that introduced the public to an impressive list of technologies which would in the following years become established in the mainstream. On the 9th of December, 1968, he demonstrated:
a mouse;
hypertext (i.e. text with links that can be followed — a precursor to the Web);
e-mail; and
video conferencing.
It also demonstrates copy and paste, which although not completely new at the time, was still not especially common. A video of the demonstration can be seen on Google Video.
