Stanford Mouse Video Archive 140
serutan writes "Stanford University has a retro-cool series of video clips of a 1968 presentation that foreshadowed the Internet and marked the public debut of the mouse. It is a surreal, weirdly captivating piece of computer history." Part of the site includes a solicitation for those who have memories and stories about the old days of computing, when programs were measured in inches and people felt they were lucky, lucky I tell you, to have ones and zeros.
We saw this recently - its got a hyperlink demo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:We saw this recently - its got a hyperlink demo (Score:1)
Re:We saw this recently - its got a hyperlink demo (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the beauty of hypertext and hyperlinking, you don't need to duplicate the data, you can link to it multiple times from multiple sites!
Re:We saw this recently - its got a hyperlink demo (Score:2, Funny)
spreading the news. (Score:3, Insightful)
God, I'd love to see this on the national news someplace.
Re:Ivies... (Score:1)
Anybody remember.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Anybody remember.. (Score:1)
Re:Anybody remember.. (Score:1)
Re:Anybody remember.. (Score:1)
Yes, and the Apple Lisa before that. And don't forget MacDraw, which introduced the now familiar Toolbar as seen in Photoshop et al. BTW MacWrite was written by Quark.
(Mac user since 1991, owns a 512k, 2- Pluses, MacPortable w/backlight, 2- Mac II fx's, 2 Mac II ci's, Centris 610, PowerCenter 132, PowerMac G4/466 running OS X)
Re:Anybody remember.. (Score:2)
I used Write on my Amiga 2500's Workbench back in the late/mid 1980s. And you know what? It had a mouse! Amigas really were ahead of their time...
Honsetly, though, I don't like using the mouse unless I'm doing some work that explicitly requires it (i.e., Quake II, CAD, etc). I find the keyboard much faster, and with BlackBox (my window manager, very possibly the best) I can access an infinite number of screens and move around with keystrokes. It's just faster when you don't have to take your hands off the keyboard. This is also why I use elvis for text editing; so I can do anything and everything without moving my hands from the "home row" (well, the general area atleast).
Ones and Zeroes (Score:1)
[. ..] people felt they were lucky, lucky I tell you, to have ones and zeros.
Well, read this piece [theonion.com] and think about it for a moment!
Okay it's a bit old.. couldn't resist though :)
Re:Ones and Zeroes (Score:1)
btw i hope you have subscribed yet. if not, you should.
Re:Ones and Zeroes (Score:1)
Yes, that's a fairly good description of what I think of you, neal n bob. Made friends with you too! ;)
Back in my days... (Score:1)
But eventually we grew tired of having only 0nes, so we tried all we can to discover the mysterious Zero.
We were sooooo excited when we finally realized the way to get Zeros (and lots of them) is to get rid of our NES that's been consuming so much of our time. So we are left with 0!
Ahh, the good old days. Though it sometimes troubles me to see how kids these days forget the pain we went through to bring them the Zeros. All they talk about are Twos...
Mac users should be ashamed... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mac users should be ashamed... (Score:1)
This is true, according to his ex girlfriend that wrote a book about him. I even have a photo somewhere showing him at his desk with an old Mac Plus on it.
Re:Mac users should be ashamed... (Score:1)
At the time Apple did some studies and found people preferred the one button mouse. Plus the other buttons didn't do what they do now... not on the Xerox Star or Alto anyway. You didn't have a "right-click" to pop up a menu. And Macs didn't have that until a few years ago anyway. On the Xerox systems you needed to right-click so you could type in the X/Y coordinates to move your window!
And I'm sure you have heard this before... but Macs can use any multi-button mouse. My old ADB Mac that I run Linux on has a three button MouseSystems mouse, and my G4/OS X has an MS Intellimouse Optical, and I can program all the extra buttons using USB Overdrive.
Re:Mac users should be ashamed... (Score:1, Offtopic)
"Piece o' cake" Bart Simpson
Re:Mac users should be ashamed... (Score:2)
Lisa and Bart sit atop a mountain.
Lisa: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Bart: Piece of cake. [claps with one hand]
Lisa: No, Bart, it's a 3000-year-old riddle with no anwer.
It's supposed to clear your mind of conscious thought.
Bart: No answer? Lisa, listen up! [claps with one hand]
-- Solving unsolved problems, ``Dead Putting Society''
Real (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Real (Score:2)
Re:Real (Score:1)
Re:Real (Score:2)
Re:Real (Score:1)
Its Real with all platforms support, not others
Oh about MPEG? Would be nice but if you are unless on an freaking speedy line, you wouldn't have chance to stream it.
Re:Real (Score:1)
Re:Real (Score:1, Offtopic)
BT Patent (Score:2)
The slashdotting rules for this story (Score:5, Funny)
Younger folks who actually programmed a PDP-anything also can have a quick look.
Re:The slashdotting rules for this story (Score:1)
What type of age? (Score:1)
- Real life age?
- Internet age (equal to 10 times the numbers of years you've used the Internet)
- Slashdot age (slashdot_user_id - max_slashdot_user_id)?
Re:What type of age? (Score:1)
Re:What type of age? (Score:1)
Slashdot age = Delta(max_slash_id/your_slash_id)
Jeremy
Re:The slashdotting rules for this story (Score:2)
-russ
Re:The slashdotting rules for this story (Score:1)
repost (Score:4, Funny)
British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart [slashdot.org] Slashdot, 28 Sep 2000
Did I see a reference to SOAP in there? (Score:2)
I think it's amazing that these guys were developing all this back in '68 and it's taken 32 years before the rest of the world catches on.
Has BT seen this? (Score:1)
Maybe the bad guys will now lose for a change.
Re:Has BT seen this? (Score:1)
The New Four Yorkshiremen (Score:2)
Cue the ucam.chat New Four Yorkshiremen sketch [ucam.org]. Binary? We used to dream o' binary!
Re:proprietary video formats in education (Score:2, Insightful)
Real is a perfectly fine format to use to distribute this type of stuff. RealPlayer is available for Win, Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc. It's not like it costs you money or is not available for most computers.
Pull the fucking stick out of your ass and realize that not everything has to be open source. There are countless perfectly acceptable closed-source programs, and RealPlayer is among them.
The reason to hate Microsoft is not because they are a monopolist but because they are a monopolist which has been found guilty of breaking the law on multiple occassions and has refused to reform their behavior.
Go ahead, mod me down to -1, Troll. I've been at the karma cap for so fucking long that I'm willing to burn it back down to zero JUST SO I CAN TELL THESE OPEN-SOURCE ZEALOTS TO GO TO HELL AND GET INTO THE REAL WORLD!
Re:proprietary video formats in education (Score:1)
You're joking, right? So every computer on every campus in the world should run either Linux or FreeBSD? What if it's a machine that Linux doesn't support, i.e. SGI (it actually does "works" on some systems, for lack of a better word)? Graphics design majors shouldn't be exposed to Photoshop, they should learn on the GIMP just on principle? Word shouldn't be available to students, even though (unfortunately) it is the de-facto standard word processor file format in the "real world"? What about AutoCAD? You're clearly insane.
Re:proprietary video formats in education (Score:2)
Unfortunately, people who use Real often only offer their content as streaming.
It's not that it's closed source... (Score:3, Funny)
Hell, my desktop OS is Windows.
I never install Real because it's an ugly, ad-laden, untrustworthy piece of spyware crap.
Besides, I'd rather have files I can download, because streaming...[buffering (10%)]...in any...[buffering(15%)]...format...[buffering(20%)
And as for MS being an illegal monopoly, I'll just say I think Be's argument is much more valid than Netscape's, because unlike Netscape, Be's flagship product didn't suck.
C-X C-S
Someone should remind the PTO to look at these... (Score:1)
Wither the BT Patent Claim (Score:4, Insightful)
We call this Prior Art.
Mouse is on display at The Tech (Score:4, Informative)
It's encased in a transparent plastic box and you can actually pick it up and study it at close. I was lucky enough to get a couple of snapshots of it.
Get a glimpse here [thetech.org].
So Xerox stole thier ideas from these guys??? (Score:3, Funny)
* Apple rips off Xerox
* Xerox rips off Stanford's Augmentation Research Center
Who did Stanford's Augmentation Research Center rip off?
Re:So Xerox stole thier ideas from these guys??? (Score:2, Informative)
If you were paying attention, you would know that these guys invented the mouse pointing device. Xerox PARC came up with the ball-driven mouse and was the first place the mouse really moved from a mere crufted-together tech-demo to a seriously usuable tool.
Re:So Xerox stole thier ideas from these guys??? (Score:2)
The question is somewhat legitimate: Who inspired them? Science fiction? Was there a XY pointing device prior to the mouse? (I can envision some clunky ideas) Who inspired them?
DEC hockey puck mouse memories (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the new optical mice better though, especially since the "puck" mouse was awkward fit in the hand...
That stanford mouse is too old school
Re:DEC hockey puck mouse memories (Score:1)
Like modern ball mice, it had two digitizers, but instead of a ball, there were two metal wheels that stuck out of the bottom at right angles. Moving left/right would roll one wheel while the other one, being at right angles, would just drag sideways across the desktop. Likewise, moving up/down would roll the other wheel while the first one dragged. Other directions would roll/slide both wheels proportionately. I can't remember how many buttons were on it.
It certainly impressed us at the time. Of course, I now also use an optical mouse which would have been unbelievable back in '68.
I posted this before, but what the heck... (Score:1)
One of the things he mentioned was that his original mouse used two orthogonal wheels instead of a mouseball. If you tilted the mouse, it would rest on only one of the wheels. Depending on which wheel it was resting on, you then could move the mouse perfectly horizontally or vertically.
This can be kind of useful in CAD work. Modern mice don't do this, although I guess you can restrict movement to one dimension via software anyway.
Has anyone got this as one big file? (Score:1)
I'd LOVE to put this on Video CD and show it to a bunch of people...
mindslip
Back in MY day... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yeah? We had to use the letter 'O'. And when RAM was being developed the only way we could store anything was by building up static electricity and using our fingers. And then sometimes we didn't even have socks. Other times we didn't have carpet. Any we liked it that way.
Re:Back in MY day... (Score:1)
:)
Mouse Videos (Score:1)
Formatting issues. (Score:1)
I also wish it weren't encoded at such a high bitrate. You 56k users will have a hard time looking at these, if these are in the same format as when they were first slashdotted; at times, even my cablemodem couldn't keep up. In fact, since it is a monochrome recording, isn't there a monochrome codec that could be used to archive this video with the same quality but without the bandwidth overkill?
Ahhhhh the good old days... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes... we loved our ones and zeros (not to mention BAUDOT too!)... and we loved the front panel lights where we could actually watch binary flowing through the registers... and who could forget the fantastic rocker switches on the front where you could REALLY man-handle your software.
Yes... the good old days where finding a bug in your program meant that the computer operator simply threw a 2 inch thick printout at you with a scrawled note at the top... YOU HAVE A BUG. And who could forget the chad wars while waiting for a program to compile!
But the thing we ESPECIALLY liked is the fact that there was no Microsoft.... computers were pure and we didn't need 2 gigahertz pentiums in order to take 3 minutes to boot a stupid OS.
The good old days... when computers were computers and programmers actually knew how to program!
Re:Ahhhhh the good old days... (Score:1)
Thanks for posting this story again. (Score:1)
There's always Net newbies coming here and bookmarks that need updating.
Most interesting to me this time are the metaphors Doug does[n't] use -- language shapes the world ya know.
noise (Score:1)
Sound Effects (Score:1)
repost? (Score:1)
too bad... (Score:1)
More proof that life is a circle... (Score:1)
OK, it's now 1998. What cool features do we want on our new computer?...ummm...
Disclaimer: I'm one of the "crusty old pharts" you read about...still make a living programming in, among other languages, COBOL. Last year, I burned a copy of this presentation on a CD, and now use it frequently to educate any "pimply-faced youth" that for whatever reason seem to believe that Microsoft *invented* computing. Try it sometime...
The moral of this story: It ain't innovation if you're copying what has already been done!
Re:More proof that life is a circle... (Score:1)
There are also tools to grab files from Real streams...I just don't have experience with them.
This method means that you end up with a set of discrete files. It's pretty simple to write a shell script to spin thru all of them in sequence...
First mouse, but not first pointing device (Score:4, Informative)
Predating all of these was the sliding crank used as a target designator in the Nike missile system. This was a 2 degree of freedom crank; you could turn the crank, or slide the handle radially. This device is not well known, but can be seen at the restored launch site [nikemissile.org] in Marin County, CA. The guidance computer for the Nike was an analog system, not a digital computer, though.
Re:First mouse, but not first pointing device (Score:4, Informative)
Chord Keyset? (Score:1)
Re:Chord Keyset? (Score:1)
It works like this: each individual key has a value. And each combination of keys has a value. So, for example, pressing the button under your thumb may correspond to the letter "a". While your other fingers may be "b", "c", "d", and "e".
Pressing both your first and second finger may input an "f". Pressing your first and third finger may input a "g".
If I remembered enough combinatorial mathematics, I could tell you how many combinations there are in 5 buttons. But, I'll just leave it as something between 26 (the alphabet) and 110 (a normal keyboard).
On a side note, I'm really glad to see that this video is getting such wide distribution. I haven't seen it in a while. But in case they don't mention it, this was done across a wireless network! The packets were transmitted between trucks parked on top of hills.
RMB
Re:Chord Keyset? (Score:1)
On the old Xerox systems you kept your one hand on the mouse and the other hand on the chord keyset. It was a keyboard with fewer keys, and you would press the keys in combinations... or chords, just like playing a chord on a piano.
Programs measured in inches? (Score:2)
...when programs were measured in inches
Inches long? Or inches thick?
Editors on Vacation? (Score:1)
Still it's an awesome video, who knows what videos they have now, of things that will look extermely weird to our children.
Doug Englebart didn't quite invent it _all_.... (Score:2)
While Doug certainly had alot to do with bringing the machine to the people, he didn't quite invent all of the ideas shown in the '68 Demo. Some of them had been around for years, and in some cases, decades. Alot of people tend to think that 50's and 60's computing were archaic and limited in scope..That everything before the personal computer was miserably bad, terribly slow and difficult to handle. Not true.
For example, Ivan Sutherland was doing primitive virtual reality, complete with head-mounted displays and motion sensors, by 1969.. Of course, it wasnt like Quake or anything, but the idea was there, the code was there, and the people to do it were there. Analog voice synthesis goes back to 1939. Realtime text-to-speech synthesis popped up in 1962. Your MP3 collection is the great, great, great grandson of research done in 1958 on digital sound synthesis.
More interestingly, perhaps, is videoconferencing. Videoconferencing, as an idea, was first demonstrated in 1926. If you can find Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" at Blockbuster, rent it. Like Englebart, Lang's vision was horrifyingly ahead of its time. Theres a scene in the film where one person dials up another person (complete with an on-screen display of the dialing process!) and within a few seconds, it connects and thye begin talking to eachother via video.
Not bad for 1926.
Cheers,
Bowie
Saw this at school (Score:1)
What about Håkan Lans? (Score:1)
See this link [nasbydal.taby.se] for some more info about him.
But this has already been discussed before [slashdot.org].
Quick question (Score:2)