Beyond Mice and Menus 1
Barbara J. Grosz · 2005
computer mouse, that is—was invented in the mid-1960s and was first demonstrated in a computer-based editing system in 1968. The videotape of that demonstration, which, like much else now, may be found on the “Web ” (NLS:demo 2004), is fascinating and enlightening. The demonstration introduced not only the mouse, but also cut-and-paste editing, hypertext, and many other technologies currently employed by all those who use computer systems for work or play. Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse, and his research group at SRI International (then the Stanford Research Institute) engineered an editing system and document preparation environment called NLS (OnLine System) that is the predecessor of today’s computer editing systems (Engelbart and English, 1968). The name of this research group, “The Augmentation Research Center, ” reflected Engelbart’s goal of constructing systems able to “augment human intellect ” (Engelbart 1962). The system features he envisioned were far ahead of that time; some remain elusive even now. Menus along with icons as a way of communicating were integrated with windows into editing systems at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s (Xerox:history 2004). Together, mice and menus enable, indeed were designed to enable, “ordinary people ” to get computers to do tasks for them without requiring that they know how to program. For any who struggled with assembly language programming or job control languages2 and the like, this new technology represented enormous progress.