website/content/history/the-mother-of-all-demos.md

---
title: THE MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS
date: '1968-12-01'
years:
- '1968'
topics:
- Hardware
- People
- Software
- Videogames
params:
  when: DECEMBER 1968
  image: /media/history/images/timeline_1268_motherdemo_s1.jpg
  oc_id: 59
  source:
    url: https://web.archive.org/web/20221215134358/http://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=59
    date: '2022-12-15'
---

![](/media/history/images/timeline_1268_motherdemo_s1.jpg)

Back in 1968, one man had a vision. This vision regarded sharing informations. The computer revolution gave the user a massive strength but very little was done to help people to work together.

Mouse, hyperlinks and email where shown that day by **Doug Engelbart** and his researchers at Stanford during a 90 minute presentation. 

But most of all the desire for open exchange of informations fueled the demonstration. And that desire is still alive today as it needs to be fulfilled. 

Internet and the Open Source movement embodies part of what he wanted to demonstrate.

Many GUI's concept were shown, as the mouse pointer, copy and paste functions, hierarchical organization of data. We can say that many Xerox PARC studies start probably from here...

Still that day he talked about the ARPAnet project in which a few computers\
were linked on a network and that with a certain bandwidth he might present his demo from another town (yes net conference!)

![](/media/history/images/timeline_1268_doug_s1.jpg)

**The demo itself:**