SRI International
More info
- Released
- 1946
- Type
- Nonprofit research institute
The Menlo Park research institute where the mouse was invented and which became the second node on the ARPANET.
Founded in 1946 as the Stanford Research Institute, it split from the university in 1970 and took its current name in 1977. This is where Douglas Engelbart's group built NLS and the computer mouse, unveiled in the famous 1968 demo. SRI owned the mouse patent and licensed it to Apple for pocket change.
In October 1969 SRI became the second ARPANET node, receiving the first message from UCLA – which crashed after two letters. The institute went on to run SRI-NIC, the network's address book before DNS. Other items from the back catalogue: the Shakey robot and the Siri voice assistant, spun out in 2007 and bought by Apple in 2010.