I was asked to give a toast in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of The Mother of All Demos so I spent some time reflecting on Engelbart’s work.
The magnitude scale dates to before the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, whose star catalog popularized the system by listing stars from 1st magnitude (brightest) to 6th magnitude (dimmest). The modern scale was mathematically defined in a way to closely match this historical system.