SRI International

SRI is a quiet but very important non-profit research institute. It was established by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. SRI describes its mission as creating world-changing solutions to make people safer, healthier, and more productive.

SRI innovations and developments are numerous including magnetic ink character recognition to process checks, urban planning with Disney for Disneyland, developed inkjet printing (1961) and optical disc recording (1963).

Douglas Engelbart, at SRI’s Augmentation Research Center led development of the modern computer-human interface including bit-mapped displays, collaboration software, hypertext, and precursors to the graphical user interface such as the computer mouse. The first mouse prototype was built by Bill English at SRI in 1964.

On October 29, 1969, the world’s first electronic computer network, ARPANET, was established between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock’s lab at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart’s lab at SRI.