Windows are the rectangular areas used for displaying information in computer graphical user interfaces (GUI). Designed in the late 1960s as part of the first personal, graphical computer interface, windows remain a key element of most GUIs.

Douglas Engelbart and his team of researchers at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) designed the first personal, graphical computer interface for their innovative computer system called the oN-Line System (NLS). The NLS interface was called a WIMP interface, which stands for windows, icons, menus, and pointers. (Engelbart is also famous for inventing the most commonly used pointing device--the mouse.) Engelbart and his researchers gave a legendary demonstration of NLS and the WIMP interface at a conference in 1968. Those who attended the NLS demonstration and saw the WIMP interface got a glimpse of what computing would look like in the future, especially personal computing.

Several SRI researchers went to work at...