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Funded by ARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force, NLS was designed around a Scientific Data Systems SDS 940 time-sharing computer with an approximately 96 MB storage disk. It could support up to 16 workstations, which were composed of a raster-scan monitor, a three-button mouse, and a device known as a chord keyset . The input of typed text was sent from the keyboard to a specific subsystem that relayed the information along a "bus" to one of two Display Controllers and Display Generators. The inputted text then was sent to a 5-inch cathode ray tube (CRT), which was enclosed by a special cover and a "superimposed" video image was then received by a professional-quality black-and-white TV camera. The TV camera information was then sent to the closed-circuit Camera Control and Patch Panel, and, finally, displayed on each workstation's video monitor.

Development of NLS was more or less finished in late 1968 and was demonstrated to a small crowd of technology specialists in San Francisco on December 8December 8 is the 342nd day (343rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 23 days remaining. Events 1854 Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin., 1968. It has since been dubbed "The Mother of All Demos" as it demonstrated the important features of NLS in a way never done before. NLS was linked via leased telephoneThe telephone or phone is a telecommunications device that transmits speech by means of electric signals. Generally attributed to the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the first was built in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1876. However, an Italian inventor Anton lines to ARC members in Menlo Park, CaliforniaMenlo Park is a city located in San Mateo County, California in the United States of America. It is located at latitude 37°29' North, longitude 122°9' West. Menlo Park has 30,785 inhabitants, according to the 2000 U. Geography Menlo Park is located at 37° and the main display of the presentation was on a large 20 foot diagonal projection screen with Douglas Engelbart addressing the audience wearing a headset.

The downfall of NLS, and subsquently, of SRI in general, was its difficult learning curve. NLS was not designed to be easy to learn, it employed the heavy use of program modes, relied on a strict hierarchical structure, did not have a point-and-click interface, and forced the user to have to learn cryptic mnemonic codes to do anything useful with the system. The chord keyset, which complemented the modal nature of NLS, forced the user to learn a 5-bit binary code if they didn't want to use the keyboard. Finally, with the arrival of the ARPA NetworkImage:Arpnet-map-march-1977. png|thumb|250px|ARPANET logical map circa 1977. source The Computer History Museum ]] The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET of the U. Department of Defense was the world's first operational packet switching ne at SRI in 1969For other uses, see Number 1969. For the movie, see 1969 (movie). Events January January 1 Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch purchases the largest selling British Sunday newspaper The News Of The World January 5 The Derry Riots leave over 100 people i, the time-sharing technology that seemed practical with a small number of users became impractical over a distributed network; time-sharing was rapidly being replaced by individual minicomputers (and later microcomputers) and workstations. Attempts to port NLS to other hardware, such as the PDP-10 and later on the DEC 20, were successful but did nothing to spread NLS beyond SRI.

Frustrated by the direction of Engelbart's "bootstrapping" crusade, many top SRI researchers left, with many ending up at the famed Xerox PARC, taking the mouse idea with them. SRI sold NLS to Tymshare in 1977 and renamed it Augment, and was, in turn, sold to McDonnell Douglas in the early 1980s. The HyPerform program sold by NDMA Inc. is a descendant of NLS/Augment.

NLS also stands for National Language Support

NLS also stands for National Lifeguard Service in Canada