Computer mouse hits 40-year milestone
By stormy at 9 December, 2008, 9:23 pm
Today on 9th December, 40 years ago, Doug Engelbart demoed his latest invention, the computer mouse at Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC).
The original mouse was made of wood and had only one button. It tracked movements using to sensor disks underneath it, one horizontally and one vertically, so that when the mouse was moved, one rolled, tracking the movement and the other one slid along.
Engelbart patented the mouse, describing it as “X-Y position indicator for a display system.” Here’s a link to the original patent. Unfortunately, he did not receive any royalties, because his patent expired in 1987, just befor the personal computer revolution and also because the newer systems worked using a ball, compared to his two disks. The ball mouse as we know it was invented by Bill English, who had built Engelbart’s original mouse.
The name “mouse” was given to the device by Engelbert because of the wire attached to it that resembled a tail.
Here is a demonstration of Engelbarts mouse:
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what a comp.mouse