Personal computers have been a driving force (arguably the driving force) in my life, allowing me to earn a living, communicate, write and create, among other things. Computers have become tools nearly all of us use on a daily basis, of course. Perhaps at this point we even take computers for granted. I’m pretty sure we do.

Forty years ago today, Douglas Engelbart and a group of researchers gave a demonstration in San Francisco of a computer system they had been working on since 1962. The machine was called NLS (oN-Line System) and included features such as a mouse and networking that would be further refined at XEROX PARC and elsewhere in the early 1970s, and become the basis for the computers we’ve been using ever since.

A video of the 90 minute presentation is available at http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html.