In the days leading up to this year's IEEE IMS show in San Francisco, I'll be presenting some fun trivia facts about the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region that may be of interest to our visitors coming to the show. In each case, i'll try to keep some sort of wireless relevance to the post.

In 1968, a famous computer scientist named Douglas Engelbart gave a demonstration of computer technology that was considered so significant that it earned the moniker of "Mother of All Demos." In it, Engelbart showed "essentially all of the elements of modern personal computing," including a graphical user interface, mouse, hypertext and more.

The wireless connection in this fun fact is that although the demonstration took place in San Francisco, the computer equipment was housed in a research center near Stanford University, about 48 kilometers to the south. The keyboard and mouse interactions were transmitted via 2400 baud modems over leased lines. In addition, a video feed was provided via a wireless microwave relay to a van parked on a ridge that overlooked both the computing site and the demonstration in San Francisco.

So you can see that wireless played a role in the history of computer technology in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area.