Inventor of Computer Mouse Dead at 88

Douglas C. Engelbart visualized computer networking and communication concepts all the way back in the 1950s

Douglas C. Engelbart, a visionary scientist whose singular epiphany in 1950 about technology's potential to expand human intelligence led to a host of inventions — among them the computer mouse — that became the basis for both the Internet and the modern personal computer, died on Tuesday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 88.

The cause was kidney failure, his wife, Karen O'Leary Engelbart, said.

Beginning in the 1950s, when computing was in its infancy, Dr. Engelbart set out to show that progress in science and engineering could be greatly accelerated if researchers, working in small groups, shared computing power. He called the approach "bootstrapping" and believed it would raise what he called their "collective IQ."

At the time, however, computers were room-size calculating machines that were not interactive and could be used by only a single person at a time.