The origin of the computer mouse

Computer mice have become so familiar in the technology world. But to develop as it is today, this device has undergone a rather long calendar process with many interesting milestones.

48 years ago, in 1968, Douglas Engelbart, an American engineer, first demonstrated the prototype of a computer mouse at a computer science conference in San Francisco state. At that time, he called this device " XY position orientation device on the screen".

48 years ago, the first computer mouse was introduced to the public.

This is an event - attended by about 1000 professional computers - which they later called " mother of all demos". The conference is the origin of many concepts that have become popular today such as computer mouse (hyper mouse), hypertext, dynamic link file .

Engelbart - the father of a computer mouse died in 2013 at the age of 88. Engelbart filed a patent in 1967 but it was only three years later that the United States recognized his invention. Engelbart's patent provides the tools needed to navigate computer graphics screens with simple hand movements, not by using the keys to manipulate the cursor on a blue screen. as before (when computer operations are done by typing the command line). When he released the demo of the device, he said: "I don't know why we called it a mouse. It started that way and we never changed it."

The mouse was originally placed in a high-grade wooden box, twice the size of today's mice.

The mouse was originally placed in a high-grade wooden box, twice as big as today's mice with 3 buttons above the head, moving with the help of two wheels on the underside, not rubber trackball. In these two wheels one will move along the horizontal and one along the vertical axis. Over time, these wheels were replaced by balls, laser lights and LED lights but their premise were the same: the movements were turned into binary code and displayed again on the computer screen.

Engelbart originally invented the mouse as a way to navigate his online system (NLS) - this is the predecessor of the internet that allows computer users to share information stored on their computers. . The NLS was developed by Engelbart with the support of the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (currently called the DARPA). This is also the first system to successfully use hypertext to link files (making information available via a click on the link).

Xerox was the first company to sell a computer system with a mouse in 1981.

Because the patent on computer mice expired before it was widely used on personal computer systems in the mid-1980s, Engelbart's invention was not recognized by users. Computer mouse technology went from Engelbart's laboratory to reality thanks to Bill English, a computer engineer who worked for him at SRI (1971). Xerox was the first company to sell a computer system with a mouse called the 8010 Star Information System in 1981.

However, the term "mouse" only became part of modern vocabulary until Apple turned the device into the standard of the first Macintosh computer system launched in 1984. Currently Microsoft and Windows operating system and web browser have made the mouse become popular in the 90s of the last century.

The term "mouse" became part of modern vocabulary in 1984.

Engelbart's work at SRI ended in 1989, when McDonnell Douglas Corp (the lab's last owner) closed it. That year, Engelbart founded the Bootstrap Institute (now the Engelbart Doug Institute), a consulting firm in Menlo Park - where he encouraged researchers to share findings or develop works based on achievements. other people.

Logitech claims to have produced one billion mice. Meanwhile, Gartner analyst Steve Prentice said: "Mice are an integral part of the graphical user interface." However, he added that mice are not the future but instead are touch screens on devices such as smartphones, laptops, touchpads and embedded video controllers. He even predicted a not-too-distant future, the place for computer mice would be in the technology museum.