In a late-1960s photo, engineer William English tests the first mouse.
In December 1968, computer scientist Douglas Engelbart had a complex system of newly developed hardware and software that he wanted to show off to the biannual meeting of the Joint Computer Conference, a gathering of researchers and manufacturers. But the conference was at the Civic Center in San Francisco, Engelbart’s work was at Stanford — and the technology for relaying video across long distances was in its infancy.
“At that point, remote television was done by direct video links,” recalls William English, the engineer who assisted Engelbart in what would turn out to be a historic event in the history of computing. “One guy on the team — I wish I could remember who it was — took on the challenge, and found a particular point up on Skyline Boulevard where he had a clear line of sight to both Menlo Park and the Civic Center.
The demonstration that that hack made possible would revolutionize the world of computing. In the space of 90 minutes, as English sat at the back of the hall at the computer controls, Engelbart gave the world its first public glimpses of windows, the mouse, word processing, hypertext links and even video conferencing — all the essential elements of today’s personal computer landscape.
This week, Engelbart’s display will be re-created in musical form on the stage of Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall. “The Demo,” a musical-theater work by the composer-performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill, promises to be both a celebration of the original showcase — a tour de force of showmanship that passed into tech lore as “the mother of all demos” — and an embodiment of everything that Engelbart’s research team made possible.
As in the actual event, Rouse, who plays Engelbart, will hold forth in front of a 20-foot video screen that displays the elements of the nascent technology (the original projector, English says, was a loaner from NASA). Neill will portray English, although in a bow to theatrical necessity he will appear onstage alongside Engelbart rather than behind the scenes.
And Engelbart, a visionary who died in 2013, makes potentially powerful fodder for theatrical treatment.
English, in fact, gets credit for much of the original design of the mouse, which helped make that part happen. The 1968 demonstration involved a sleek but bulky handheld box that could move in any direction thanks to two perpendicular wheels.
The influence of Engelbart’s demo is hard to overestimate. The ideas it contained helped shape the development of personal computing both at Apple and Microsoft, and paved the way for the individual work stations that computer users now take for granted.
The importance of the event, English says, was plain even at the time.
“People were impressed by it — the mouse, the interactivity, all of it. When we finished up, the entire audience stood up and applauded. It was a very emotional moment; we hadn’t realized just what we’d done.
The Demo: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 1-Thursday, April 2, Bing Concert Hall, Stanford. $40-$65, (650) 724-2464, http://live.stanford.edu.