He may be most famous for inventing the computer mouse, but as the Los Angeles Times reports, in the 1960s Douglas Carl Engelbart “envisioned the power of interconnected computers to accelerate the pursuit of knowledge and solve the world’s increasingly complex problems, laying the foundation for the modern computing age and the Internet.”

But he was also one of the key people involved in developing the domain name system. “In the early 1970s, his laboratory was one of those that hosted the ARPAnet, the forerunner of the Internet. It also hosted the Network Information Center, which would eventually become officially responsible for doling out Internet domain names.”

To read more on Douglas Carl Engelbart’s achievements and the key role in the development of computing, see articles in the Los Angeles Times here and the Washington Post here.