Today is November 17th, 2006.

It was three years ago today that former bodybuilder, Hollywood actor and Austrian native, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California.

Actor Danny Devito blows out 62 candles today. He was born in Neptune, New Jersey on this date in 1944. He, of course, is most recognized for playing the part of Louie DePalma in the television series Taxi. In addition to his TV work, he has acted in, produced or directed well over 100 feature films.

Speaking of films, one of the most prolific and decorated directors in Hollywood history is also celebrating a birthday today. Martin Scorsese was born in New York 64 years agotoday. His filmography includes movies such as: The Gangs of NewYork, The Aviator, The Color of Money and Goodfellas.

And finally.

On a small farm in Oregon in the year 1925, Douglas Englebart was born. He graduated from high school 17 years later. Afterwards, Douglas went to Oregon State University and majored in Electrical Engineering. As was common for the time, his college education was put on hold for a few years due tomilitary service in World War II. He spent 2 years as a radar technician in the Philippines before returning home to finish his college degree.

After graduating, he went to work at the Ames Research Laboratory near San Francisco. Within a few years, Douglas grew tired of the monotony of daily life. Waking up, going to work, collecting a paycheck, going home and doing this day after day. He knew that there was a bigger purpose for his life, but he did not yet know what it was. He began searching for ways in which his career could help to further mankind and leave a mark on technology and society. Within a few years, Douglas Englebart had, in his own mind, painted his vision of the future. Douglas envisioned that someday people could sit down at their desks in front of screens that have large amounts of information, which is readily accessible, easy to manipulate, sort and cross-reference. Sound familiar? Well, keep in mind that this was in the early 1950’s, only a few short years after the invention of the transistor and several decades before desktop computers and the World Wide Web. Needless to say, Douglas Englebart was way ahead of his time.

With his new found career goal in mind, Douglas enrolled at the graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1955. After a short stint as an associate professor, he accepted a research position at Stanford. It was at Stanford that he would publish his career-defining research paper. It was entitled: “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework”. In laymen’s terms, this paper set out to establish a plan by which machines and computers could be designed to help people gather and manipulate information which could be used to solve everyday problems as well as invent future technologies more efficiently than ever before.

With this goal in mind, Douglas would soon start his own research laboratory in order to turn his dreams into reality. He would invent and patent several different technologies. Many of these inventions were demonstrated at a trade show in San Francisco in 1968. This demo was so beyond what was thought possible at the time that it has been named “The Mother of All Demonstrations”. He performed a live demo of video conferencing, teleconferencing, email and many other things that are common place now. Remember though, this was several decades before desktop computers and the Internet. One of the devices used during the demonstration that day was a small handheld instrument with a long and awkward name. He called this device an “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System.” Fortunately, you and I have a much simpler name for this device. We would call it a computer mouse and Douglas Englebart received a patent for the very first one on this date, November 17th in the year 1970.

And that is just one of the things that occurred on this day in history.