“In 20 or 30 years, you'll be able to hold in your hand as much computing knowledge as exists now in the whole city, or even the whole world.”
Douglas Engelbart (American Inventor, most famous for co-inventing the computer mouse b.1925)
Douglas Engelbart made this comment at an awards ceremony in 1997 where he received the Lemelson-MIT Prize for American invention and innovation. His comment refers to nanotechnology, and we are now well on our way to achieving this goal, with computer technology becoming smaller and smaller yet faster and faster and more comprehensive with every passing year.
Engelbart’s most famous invention was the computer mouse. In 1967, he applied for a patent for a wooden shell with two metal wheels known as a’mouse’ due to its ‘tail’. The patent describes the device as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Despite its huge significance for computing, Engelbart never made much money from his invention although he did receive half a million dollars as part of the Lemelson-MIT Prize. Engelbart was also involved in the development of other significant innovations such as hypertext, computer networking and graphical user interfaces.
