Talk:Douglas Engelbart

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Douglas Engelbart article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1

Daily pageviews of this article

A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

Douglas Engelbart has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 17, 2013	Good article nominee	Listed

A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on July 4, 2013.

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on December 9, 2013, December 9, 2016, December 9, 2018, July 2, 2023, and December 9, 2023.

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as High-importance).

California: San Francisco Bay Area Low‑importance

	California portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	San Francisco Bay Area portal This article is supported by San Francisco Bay Area task force (assessed as Low-importance).

Oregon High‑importance

	Oregon portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Oregon, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Oregon on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.OregonWikipedia:WikiProject OregonTemplate:WikiProject OregonOregon articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
The current collaborations of the month are Women's History Month: Create or improve articles for women listed at Oregon Women of Achievement (modern) or Women of the West, Oregon chapter (historical).

Stanford University: SRI International Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Stanford University, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Stanford University on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Stanford UniversityWikipedia:WikiProject Stanford UniversityTemplate:WikiProject Stanford UniversityStanford University articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the SRI International task force (assessed as Mid-importance).

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Apple's Mighty Mouse: What Were They Thinking?". Low End Mac. 2005-08-03.

References[edit]

Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962)[edit]

The Reference to Doug Engelbart's 1962 research report Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, introduced here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#SRI_and_the_Augmentation_Research_Center, is obsolete and should be corrected. The link to his report should be https://dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html, and a separate link to the most recent archive version of 2-Jun-2022 on Internet Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20220602190201/https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html - I have recently overhauled the referenced report on dougengelbart.org to correct many errors and ommissions that had been introduced in the original scanning and subsequent rendering to html since 1997(!) MouseSite version. By matching the text back to the original printed archive I have made numerous spelling corrections, instances of enhanced text (underlined for emphasis in the original, now italicized in the digital), adding back in omitted text such as Forward, Abstract, plus a (clickable) detailed Table of Contents, and rescanning images whose original scans had introduced some errors. Yay for Internet Archive, there is now a 2-Jun-2022 archive of the corrected version of the report to link to instead of the archived obsolete version. The desired Reference format is shown in the Wiki article on Intelligence Amplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification#References items #2 and #3 which do point to the official version on dougengelbart.org and separately link to the Archived version although as of this date they have yet to update that "Archived" link to the 2-Jun-2022 archive Cengelbart (talk) 17:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Douglas Engelbart. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 13:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Douglas Engelbart. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:07, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

“Purple Numbers”[edit]

The page Purple Numbers redirects here, without any mention of the term in the article. Is this right? Should something be added to the page? YorkshireLad (talk) 12:22, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I found this website that mentions purple numbers and Engelbart [1]. It seems obscure. --Frmorrison (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

YorkshireLad, Frmorrison - I found this strange, too therefore I have opened a deletion review request to restore the standalone article. After a bit of research I found quite a bit of stuff written about purple numbers on the Web. « Saper // @talk » 14:37, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Saper, Thanks for the ping; I don't have anything to add to your DRV atm but I'll keep an eye on it. :-) YorkshireLad ✿ ^(talk) 14:46, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Saper: regardless of the outcome of the DRV, it would be helpful to have a mention of purple numbers on this article: in the short term it would resolve the confusing redirect, and, if undeletion goes through (either through DRV or through draft-then-AfC) it would create a convenient place to create a link to avoid the recreated article being an orphan (one could potentially add a red link, but I think that would be discouraged through WP:REDNO).

I tried to add a sentence or two, but the problem I've had is that I can't find any reliable sources talking about this. (The best I can do is Frmorrison's link, and that seems to be a personal website, which in any case doesn't quite say that Engelbart invented a concept called "purple numbers". It says he had a website that had purple numbers on it, and that he came up with a similar concept which that website's owner has implemented.) Looking at the history of the WP:BLARred article, there are no reliable sources in there either: the only reference is itself another wiki. Have you had any luck finding sources? (If we collectively draw a blank, it would seem to suggest the solution is to nominate the redirect at WP:RfD.) YorkshireLad ✿ ^(talk) 00:40, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Christina Engelbart here (Cengelbart (talk)) pinging @Saper:, @YorkshireLad:, @Frmorrison: -- appreciate your diligence! I agree Purple Numbers should have its own page, and/or redirect to the NLS (computer system) article and not this bio article.

I can confirm that "Purple Numbers" did indeed originate in Doug Engelbart's group in the mid-1990s. Building directly on his NLS/Augment software, under a modest DARPA grant purpose to build a browser-style client UI we called VAT to better demo Augment's key features like fine-grained addressability. I helped spec this UI under this contract, which enabled us finally to add in proportional space fonts and font colorization, text highlighting, scrolling Windows-style file windows, etc. It was my idea to colorize the Augment-supplied address numbers to set them apart visually from the file content. After experimenting for several hours with different colors and intensities, I landed on a shade of orchid purple. You can see the completed UI demonstrated in Augment Demos "2008 Christina" -- showing the very first instance of Purple Numbers. That's Augment software displayed through the VAT client which is doing the colorizing. We very soon incorporated Purple Numbers into our website Bootstrap Institute, as documented here, which persists today. Importantly, today the numbers are flush to the right margin which we wished we could have implemented way back then.

Both Peter Yim and Eugene Kim, who were very involved in Doug's 2000 Colloquium at Stanford and subsequent OHS Working Group, definitively documented Purple Numbers at the time:

PurpleNumbers, by Peter Yim
An Introduction to Purple, by Eugene Kim

Both took stabs at implementing Purple Numbers for Wiki browsing. In 2005-2006 Eugene was hired into Doug's HyperScope project, which included Purple Numbers for fine-grained addressability, and co-presented The Augmented Wiki with Doug at subsequent conference. I'm not sure which of us coined the term "Purple Numbers" -- Eugene may recall.

Bottom line you/whoever can confidently glean from my writing above plus their two pieces, citing especially their two pieces, to flesh out a Purple Numbers page. (Cengelbart (talk) 22:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC) -- Christina Engelbart, Executive Director, The Doug Engelbart Institute.)[reply]

... and/or I publish short History of Purple Numbers at [https://dougengelbart.org] that you can cite. Cengelbart (talk) 15:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Guiding philosophy section[edit]

The four points in guiding philosophy were not said by Engelbart. They seem to be a summation of a number of secondary articles that do not cite their sources. I have found a number of people quoting this online as Engelbart's words. The provenance of this sentiment seems to be citing his various talks:

http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/sessions.html http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/161/000/ https://stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/engelbart/engfmst1-ntb.html There are many more out there.

I have been looking but I haven't found him saying these things. To avoid further misquoting it should be made evident that these are a summation and not his specific words. Or the actual source should be cited here rather than secondary articles. This section is not incorrect as far as I can tell, and it sounds like something Engelbart would say. It is rather an abridgment of a summary of his reasoning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.244.213.153 (talk) 17:11, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thierry Bardini in an early chapter of his work describes evolution of Engelbart's ideas extensively, quoting, among others [Engelbart 1996]: "Douglas Engelbart: An Oral History. Four interviews conducted by H. Lowood and J. Adams, edited by T. Bardini. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Libraries. Available on-line at https://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/engelbart/start.html". Archived at http://web.archive.org/web/19990423125248/https://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/engelbart/start.html, it seems to be relocated to https://stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/engelbart/start1.html

There is also a much later formulation of his goals (http://web.archive.org/web/20060202024324/http://bootstrap.org/#3 - "Reasons for action"), but we refer here to his thoughts from 1950s (it could be changed of course). « Saper // @talk » 23:35, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Christina Engelbart here - I think I'm the one who contributed the four bullet points, definitely a summation, paraphrased from his myriad lectures, writings, and interviews. Some good sources for quotes:

The Introduction to Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, D.C. Engelbart 1962 or any of his abridged versions
Engelbart Oral Histories (Stanford, Smithsonian, Computer History Museum)
The Augmented Knowledge Workshop, D.C. Engelbart, 1986 - his lecture and paper detailing his historic journey from epiphany to R&D, the Demo, and beyond — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cengelbart (talk • contribs) 20:18, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]