Almost every single person listening to this podcast right now is doing so on some sort of personal computing device.

Many of the things that we consider part of a modern personal computer, Windows, Hyperlinks, a mouse, a text editor,

were all released upon the world in a single 90-minute

demonstration in 1968.

The ideas were so advanced it would take over two decades before most of them found themselves in everyone's home.

Learn more about the Mother of All Demos and the birth of personal computing

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. Despite what you might think, the personal computer didn't start with Steve Jobs and

Apple or Bill Gates and Microsoft. To be sure they had an important role to play,

but all of the major innovations we associate with personal computer software were actually developed before Apple or Microsoft even existed. In particular, most of these ideas were developed by one man in the researchers in his laboratory, Douglas Engelbart.

And if you don't recognize his name, you probably should.

Douglas Engelbart grew up on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon during the Great Depression.

He enrolled at Oregon State University for electrical engineering, and like almost everyone else in his generation,

he joined the military in World War II. He enlisted in the Navy and became a radar technology. in his

generation, he joined the military in World War II.

After the war, he returned to college and completed his degree in 1948.

He then went to work at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, or NACA.

The NACA was the predecessor of NASA.

After serving in the war, he wanted to direct his energies towards peaceful purposes, and he saw

the potential in the electronic computer.

In 1951, there were very few computers in the entire world.

Those that did exist were enormous behemists

that took up entire rooms or buildings

...