on-line system

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NLS
Basic data

developer Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute
Publishing year December 9, 1968 as part of the lecture A research center for augmenting human intellect
category draft

NLS , or on -line system , was a revolutionary collaborative computer system in the 1960s. Designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) NLS, it was the first system that enabled the practical use of hypertext links, raster scan monitors , mouse , screen management, presentation programs and realized and made possible by other modern computing concepts. The project was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency , NASA and the US Air Force .

Historical development

Douglas Engelbart developed his concepts between 1959 and 1960 with the support of the US Air Force and published a framework in 1962. The strange redundant acronym NLS comes from the words o N - L ine S ystem, where "on-line" does not match the today's meaning was used, but characterized the interactive operation of a machine. The name was chosen to distinguish the new system from the other oFf-Line System (FLS), because both should be called OLS with a real acronym. However, his first computer couldn't support more than one user at a time. First the CDC 160A came out in 1963, which had very little programming power on its own.

As a bridging measure, the team developed a system in which users - i. H. People who were not at a terminal could edit their documents by punching a series of commands on a punched tape with a punched tape writer . After the tape was complete, the user inserted the punched tape that held the last draft of the document into the computer, followed by the tape with the changes. The computer then printed out a new punched tape with the changed and current version. Without an interactive visualization, this approach was very delicate because the user had to keep in mind the cumulative effects of his commands on the document. This problem was solved in the online system by locking the screen and making changes based on the version shown on the screen. This approach had the advantage that the user could jump back and forth in the text and not lose the thread after a change that otherwise implied a refresh.

In the further development, both the off-line workflow and the interactive on-line process were supported. Originally the systems were named oFf-Line Text System (FLTS) and oN-Line Text System (NLTS), but over time they supported more than just text and the T was dropped.

Robert Taylor , who had a background in psychology, supported the project from NASA. When he moved to the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Defense Department, he was able to provide even more funding for the project and the NLS development group presented the CDC 3000 computer series in 1965 . Another key figure , Jeff Rulifson , joined SRI in 1966 and became the lead programmer of NLS development until he left the company in 1973.

Workstation with the 3-button mouse and the chord keyboard

The development continued in 1968 with the Scientific Data Systems and with the computer SDS 940 , on which the Berkley timeshare system ran. This computer had a hard drive of approximately 96MB and could support up to 16 workstations, each of which was equipped with a raster scan monitor , a mouse with 3 buttons and a chord keyboard . The input of the typed text was sent from the keyboard to a certain subsystem, which forwards the information over a bus to one of the two display controllers and display generators . The text entered was then sent on a 127 mm (5-inch) cathode ray tube (CRT), which was enclosed by a special cover, and the overlaid video image was received by a professional high quality black and white TV camera. This TV camera information was then passed on to the closed-circuit camera control unit (CCU) and to the patch panel and the text was finally displayed on the monitors of all workstations.

A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect

NLS was demonstrated by Engelbart on December 9, 1968 to the large audience at the annual Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco under the title A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect . The demonstration became known as The Mother of All Demos in 1994 because it not only demonstrated the innovative functionality of the system, but also used some notable, state-of-the-art video technologies. Engelbart's on-stage terminal was connected to a large video projector borrowed from NASA's Ames Research Center , and also connected via leased phone lines to an ARC SDS 940 computer located in Menlo Park, 50 km southeast of San Francisco. On the six-meter screen, the audience could see what was happening on Engelbart's monitor, how he used the mouse and how the members of his team in Menlo Park were connected to the conference.

One of the NLS's revolutionary functions, the journal, was developed in 1970 by the Australian computer science engineer David A. Evans as part of his doctoral thesis. The journal was a primitive hypertext-based groupware that can be seen as the forerunner of all modern server software that enable collaborative document creation. It was used by ARC members to discuss, debate, and refine concepts, as is common in wikis today. The journal was also used for document storage for the Network Information Center and early e-mail archives. Most of the journal documents are preserved in paper form and archived at Stanford University . They form a valuable report on the development of the ARC community from 1970 to 1976 when the center's marketing began. Another large collection of journal documents is in the Computer History Museum , along with a large collection of ARC backup tapes from both the early 1970s and some tapes from the SDS 940 from the 1960s.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kate Gust: NLS Augment Index . Ed .: Computer History Museum . November 6, 2006 ( softwarepreservation.org ).
  2. ↑ Matthias Müller-Prove: Vision and Reality of Hypertext and Graphical User Interfaces (=  reports from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hamburg . No. 237 ). Hamburg, Germany August 27, 2009, p. 7 ( edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de [PDF; 4.5 MB ; accessed on May 27, 2015]).
  3. ↑ Jakob Nielsen : The History of Hypertext . February 1, 1995 ( nngroup.com ).
  4. ^ A b c Douglas C. Engelbart : Augmented Knowledge Workshop . In: HPW '86 Proceedings of the ACM Conference on The history of personal workstations . ACM Digital Library, New York, NY 1986, ISBN 0-89791-176-8 , pp. 73-83 , doi : 10.1145 / 12178.12184 ( dougengelbart.org [accessed May 27, 2015]).
  5. ↑ Interviewer: Judy Adams and Henry Lowood: Douglas Engelbart . In: Stanford University (Ed.): Stanford and the Silicon Valley Oral History Interviews . No. January 2 , 14, 1987 ( web.stanford.edu ( memento of April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) [accessed on May 28, 2015]).
  6. ^ Douglas C. Engelbart : Quarterly Technical Letter Report 1 . In: Study for the Development of Human Intellect Augmentation Techniques . Stanford Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA May 12, 1966, (4 1d) - ( web.stanford.edu ).
  7. ↑ John Frederick (Jeff) Rulifson . In: Alumni Hall of Fame 2006 . SRI International, 2006 ( sri.com ).
  8. ↑ Original Program Announcement for Mother of All Demos
  9. ↑ The Click Heard Round The World (=  12 . Band 01 ). January 2004 ( archive.wired.com ).
  10. ^ D. Meyer: Network Journal Submission and Delivery . Ed .: Network Working Group. Augmentation Research Center, Palo Alto, CA July 31, 1973 ( tools.ietf.org [PDF; 18 kB ; accessed on May 28, 2015]).