Douglas Engelbart, Inventor of the Mouse, Dead at 88

He did something awesome and now he's dead. And you've never heard of him before now.

Douglas Engelbart, best known as the inventor of the computer mouse, has died at age 88.
During his lifetime, Engelbart made numerous groundbreaking contributions to the computing industry, paving the way for videoconferencing, hyperlinks, text editing, and other technologies we use daily.

Engelbart didn't really like the term "mouse." In a recent profile by The New York Times, his daughter Christina revealed it was actually fellow researchers that came up with the name. "It was just what they called it affectionately," she said. Engelbart referred to it as the "X-Y position indicator for a display system." I really wish that is what we still called it...

Christina Engelbart confirmed her father's death today. "His health had been deteriorating of late, and took turn for worse on the weekend."

If you want to learn a little more about Douglas check out The Verge's nice piece on him.