Douglas C. Engelbart, Winner 1997 Lemelson-MIT Prize

At what later became known as "the Mother of All Demos," Douglas Engelbart in 1968 publicly demonstrated the computer mouse, hypermedia and shared screen teleconferencing for the first time. His presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco received a standing ovation from 2,000 astonished computer professionals who had never before seen a mouse-controlled cursor manipulate text. In fact, they had never before seen a text-only display, such as Engelbart had projected onto a large screen from a primitive mainframe computer located 25 miles away! His demonstration predated the first personal computer as well as word processing software. In 1997, he was awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.