Estimated reading time: 1 minute

The Shaughnessy Report: The Old Guard Moves On

We’ve officially entered 2014. How can that even be possible? If you look back at the year in terms of trade shows, it seems like we just left IPC APEX EXPO in San Diego. But now, we’re gearing up for trade show season again.

The year ahead is ripe with promise. The jobless rate recently dropped to 7%, the lowest in five years, and more jobs were added to the economy in December than analysts expected. And, surprisingly, the U.S. government hasn’t shut down in nearly three months! Did the Democrats and Republicans secretly agree to quit calling each other names and actually work together? Probably not, but we can hope.

But before we get caught up in 2014, let’s look back at the truly great innovators we lost in 2013. Doug Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse, died at 88. He served in WWII as a Navy radar technician, and later went to work at the Stanford Research Institute, where he developed the computer mouse in the 1960s and was awarded a patent in 1970.

At first, even his peers wondered why anyone would need such a thing. It wasn’t the most technologically advanced idea; it was a wooden box with two wheels and a red button. (It wasn’t even called a “mouse” in the patent paperwork.) But it revolutionized the way humans interact with computers, not to mention how we all work and communicate. Engelbart was also a pioneer in the creation of the Internet predecessor ARPANet, hypertext, and videoconferencing technology, among a long list of accomplishments. But he’ll always be remembered for the mouse.Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the January 2014 issue of The PCB Design Magazine.