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THE VIDEO SHELF · history of computing

The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)

The full recording of Douglas Engelbart's 1968 demonstration, which introduced the mouse, hypertext, video conferencing, word processing, and real-time collaborative editing. It runs about 100 minutes.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN treats it as an essential piece of computing history that shows how many modern interface ideas were already solved in 1968.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Marcel
Topic
history of computing
Format
demo
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
8
HN mentions in dataset
20
Recommendation years in dataset
2013–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • I was just listening to one of Douglas Crockford's talks which discussed the contributions Engelbart made to computer science. What really stuck with me was the sheer number of new concepts he showed in his demo, which, though made in 1968, would showcase features not …

    estreeper on Hacker News · 2013-07
    In Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88

  • those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. watching the mother of all demos once a year is a sobering reminder of that. [VIDEO] some better-than-most discussion here: [LINK]

    gjvc on Hacker News · 2015-05
    In Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat

  • The Mother Of All Demos is an absolute classic: [VIDEO] [LINK] I also very much enjoy Feynman’s talks. Here’s one on imagining physics: [LINK] For computer science in particular, I highly recommend the first lecture in the SICP series, especially on the naming of so …

    otras on Hacker News · 2018-10
    In Ask HN: What are some old talks (10+ y) that are still relevant to watch today?

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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