Talk:The Mother of All Demos

message: Please note that the left hand chorded keyboard looks quite like a 1950s stenographer keyboard.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:A5A6:68B7:2655:FF16 (talk) 07:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  chorded keyboard 

message: Since the "Mother of All Demos" term wasn't used until the 1990s, what was the demo previously referred to?  What was it titled or listed as when originally given? Pimlottc (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The formal name of the session / paper is: Engelbart, D. & English, W. (1968). A research center for augmenting human intellect. AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference. p. 295-410 (I'll add this to the main article - good catch). Informal references to the demo that I recall (or used) include: "Engelbart's demo", "Engelbart's 1968 demo", "Engelbart's FJCC demo". At the time, the Spring and Fall Joint Computer Conferences (SJCC, FJCC) were biggest computing research events with widely published proceedings, so "Engelbart's 1968 FJCC demo" might be the most common informal citation used in research papers or news articles ... --Grlloyd (talk) 10:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The 'Mother of all....' terminology was first used in a defiant statement by Saddam Hussein with reference to the 'mother of all battles' that would ensue if Iraq were invaded, 1991 - is that not the case?  Perhaps this fact should be noted and referenced? --Ndaisley (talk) 09:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: IF this phrase originated with Saddam Hussein, something already proven false here, that “fact” should be in its own article (which it already is), and not here. No history of “mother of all” should be described here. The only significant thing that should be said about it here is that it is a widely used snowclone, and reference an article about this particular snowclone, if that.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.48.250.146 (talk) 19:40, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

text: It was here before, but then removed - see here. If you could find a reference for it, it would probably be easier to restore. Korny O'Near (talk) 17:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

text: If "Engelbart's 1968 FJCC demo" is the most commonly used name for the talk, should we retitle the article, per WP:COMMONNAME? It seems a little disrespectful to be titling it after Levy's nickname for the session, and it's not clear from the presented sources that it's uniformly known by this name today. --McGeddon (talk) 12:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: IMHO, the current title is appropriate. The most common way to refer to this event is probably to say "THE Demo, but that's not very useful for an article title. MarkBernstein (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine, WP:COMMONNAME doesn't require us to use the most common name if that name would be ambiguous. But what's the second or third most common way to refer to it? Does "Engelbart's 1968 FJCC demo" come above "The Mother of All Demos"? --McGeddon (talk) 14:01, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

text:  Re: the original name: as per Grlloyd comment above, technically speaking this was indeed a talk at a professional conference, which was listed on the marquis at the conference as: 'A research center for augmenting human intellect', similarly in the 1968 AFIPS FJCC conference proceedings and the companion paper by Engelbart and English published in the proceedings. I believe it was most often referred to in-house as the 1968 FJCC Demo, to differentiate from other demos, for example the 1969 ASIS Demo. It was also variously called Doug's Demo, Engelbart's 1968 Demo, etc. Even for years after the nickname "Mother of All Demos" was publicized, the demo was still referred to by many names and it would have been hard to pick one most commonly used name. As of the last few years however, I would say that it is now referred to overwhelmingly as the Mother of All Demos. -- Christina Engelbart Cengelbart (talk) 22:09, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

text:  Re: should the name of the article be changed? I vote to keep it as is (The Mother of All Demos) since I believe it is now most commonly known as and recognized as such.  --Christina Engelbart Cengelbart (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original name? 

message: It was my understanding that  Andy van Dam coined the name "The Mother of All Demos". However, the Article currently credits Steven Levy per his 1994 book, and states that Andy later used the term in his 1998 talk at this 30th Anniversary Event.  I had been working from these and similar publications which credit Andy as the first, for example Computer Science Illuminated, plus these vintage webpages at Brown Douglas Engelbart and 'The Mother of All Demos' and Telecollaboration: Beyond Memex and NLS, which seem to predate the 1998 event by one or two years, credit Andy. What's the best way to verify one way or another? -- Christina Engelbart Cengelbart (talk) 23:13, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Andy is still around, maybe you could ask him directly? MFNickster (talk) 00:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who Coined the Name? 

message: Should we begin work on a chronological overview of the demo? -ankØku- (talk) 23:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes! We should start off with a description of the set-up, with video projector, CCTV camera, telephone lines and remote mainframe computers. Then describe what happens as each new element (mouse, hypertext, etc.) is introduced. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:23, 31 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview of the Demo?

message: Alan Kay says Stewart Brand was the cameramanhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9055536763288165825&hl=fi&emb=1#. Who else? 85.77.32.136 (talk) 08:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Other names that have been mentioned: Tom Hagan, Ivan Sutherland, Alan Kay. Bill Paxton was presenting with Engelbart. Bob English was part of Engelbart's team. Bob English? This must mean Bill English . Also, Jeff Rulifson and Andy Van Dam - and Arthur C. Clarke saw some of it before the demo.. – Tatu Siltanen (talk • contribs) 19:40, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who were there? 

message: This claims they used something called the Tree Meta Language, among others.85.77.32.136 (talk) 08:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: How did they do it?

message: "The term "Mother of All Demos" references "The Mother of All Battles"" - if the former happened in 1968 and the latter in 1991, how did the former reference the latter? Time machine?
71.7.61.139 (talk) 04:21, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, no one referred to it as such at the time is was delivered. To contemporaries, it was a very good talk.  By 1987, when the video recording was played at the first ACM Hypertext Conference, the event had become proverbial.  My recollection was that we referred to the event at that time as "The Demo", and that -- or "Doug’s Demo," -- is the usage I've most often adopted myself.  But "The Mother of All Demos" has appeared frequently in the press in the past decade, and fits more gracefully in common Wikipedia usage. MarkBernstein (talk) 13:41, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Englebart references hussein? Shouldn't it be the other way aroud? 

message: Today, if you say "convention center in San Francisco" (try entering that phrase into Google, or even saying it out loud in the Bay Area), most people think you mean Moscone Center.  This did not exist before the 80s.  Where did the actual conference take place?  I was Googling around and found a vague reference to it happening at Fort Mason, but that does not look like an adequate citation. - 70.36.139.84 (talk) 13:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where did this happen? 

message: I have traced this article's references to the article published on the Ars Technica website and there was indeed information about a simple form of windows used in NLS. However, watching the original 1968 demo recording, all I could see was some kind of screen splitting; there was no windows metaphor. Another article that I found here refers to this feature as "windows-like subsections". Speaking of windows in NLS seems an overinterpretation to me, although it depends on the definition of a window. Krzyszcz (talk) 13:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows? 

message: Several years ago I saw a mural of this event on the web. It was a wonderful and creative diagram in the form of a graphic time line that highlights many events that enabled and preceded the demo. I can't seem to find this now, but it would make a important and very visual addition to this article. Thanks!  --Lbeaumont (talk) 21:29, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I have found it at: http://visualinsight.net/_engelbart/engelbart_mural.jpg  Totally cool! --Lbeaumont (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Timeline Mural of the event 

message: FWIW, if you have not read this, you should. It's readily available on the internet, and, frankly, is like the best of all prognostications -- it sees a need and imagines a device to fulfill it. It consistently gets the device egregiously wrong, but the need is the important thing. RAH did this repeatedly, "inventing" nuclear stalemate/MAD, nuclear power plant problems, and the interstate highway, all in the early 40s. Vannevar Bush's article describes the modern internet/PC in every regard that matters. You could practically argue that all modern software patents are invalidated by this "prior description". Yeah, that's hyperbole, but more correct than you'd imagine until you've read AWMT.
--104.129.204.105 (talk) 22:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  As We May Think...