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I have some trouble seeing how Engelbart's demo wasn't just integrating many existing technologies. For example, live television had existed for decades, so teleconferencing would seem like a small leap. While Engelbart's team did independently[1] invent the mouse, Apple made the first consumer mouse, and by also inventing drag gestures, they didn't have to go with the frankly shitty UI suggested by Engelbart.

1. Telefunken was selling a mouse several weeks before this demo -- http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Auf-den-Spuren-der-de...

[This comment has been edited a couple of times]




The Engelbart demo is about as much about teleconferencing as the iPhone introduction is just about a nicer mobile phone.

And I think both the original and my reply were about the demos themselves not about the mouse specifically or Apple in general. My point was that a technology demo of a research prototype and a product introduction are radically different things. I suspect that Engelbart's demo itself must have been a very early, (the first?) large-scale, live demonstration of interactive computer technology. They had to borrow an Eidophor from NASA to do it, which gives an idea of how unusual it was for the time. It's not like they showed up and plugged a coax cable into the projection system of the convention hall. That's one, among many reasons why one of these things is The Demo and the other a demo.


> Engelbart's demo itself must have been a very early, (the first?) large-scale, live demonstration of interactive computer technology.

Teletypes had been commercially available for decades, and minicomputers (PDP-8) for about four years. It seems glass terminals started appearing only a year before this demo, though.


Have you watched the demo? Or looked up what an Eidophor is? This is pretty much the invention of the 'computer demo in front of a big, live audience'. I have no idea what teletypes have to do with any of this.


Obviously I haven't been understanding what you're tring to say. From your most recent comment, I think you're saying that the groundbreaking thing was showing a computer screen through an eidophor in order to demonstrate its functions live before a large audience.

With this in mind, I will claim that the iPhone demonstration is similar in that it's the first case of a phone being connected to a big screen projector to demonstrate its functions live before a large audience.




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