Have you ever watched a ‘gamer’ lose it?
Frustrated by frequent defeats or non-cooperative team members, gamers go from zero to 100mph in a matter of seconds.
And they usually take it out on their mouse.
Constant clicking, smashing against the desk, hitting against the wall, the list goes on.
The computer mouse has accompanied us, computer users, since day one.
Even with the development of touch screens, avid computer users still prefer a handy mouse by their side.
It just makes things easier!
It wasn’t until Apple released its Macintosh in 1984 that the mouse as we know it today became the standard method for controlling desktop computers.
In an interesting experiment designed to find better ways of interacting with computers, Douglas Engelbart invented the first mouse.
He introduced it at the (ACM/IEEE) joint conference in San Francisco on December 9, 1968.
This demonstration has become a landmark in the field of computers.
It’s become known as ‘The Mother of All Demos.’
How It All Started
As told by Engelbart himself, the idea struck him when attending a conference for computer graphics in 1961.
He got bored with the way presenters dealt with graphics and how non-interactive they were.
In his notebook, he started to sketch the idea of a cursor that points to the screen.
The device would move horizontally and vertically.
It would then send its coordinates to a register, and the movement would be displayed on the screen.
The idea was simple…but ingenious.
A couple of wheels that move up and down against a surface, connected to the main computer through an electric circuit, all encapsulated in a wooden box with a small control button on top.
Named after its primary function, the computer mouse was first called the ‘X-Y Position Indicator of a Display System.’
Later on, with the chord coming out its end, they saw how it resembled a rodent mouse and decided on the name.
And that’s how the mouse got its name.
Let’s Get Graphical – Alto
In 1973, Xerox was working on developing a personal computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) called Alto.
To match Alto’s unprecedented technological advancement at the time, they complemented it with a mouse.
What didn’t keep up with Alto’s advanced technology was the limited motion of that mouse.
You could’ve only tilted or rocked the so-called mouse back then. This wasn’t enough for the people of Xerox.
They started developing a mouse that uses a trackball instead of perpendicular wheels. The idea was inspired by a trackball that the British Navy used after World War 2 to track aircraft on radars.
Courtesy of Ralph Benjamin, 1944.
Today’s Wireless Mouse
The wireless mouse that’s most commonly used nowadays was invented by John Markoff & Sol Sherr in the 1980s.
They pitched the idea of using light and infrared detectors to map the mouse’s motion instead of mechanical trackballs.
It’s taken a lot of collaborative work to get to the mouse we know today.
Next time you’re tempted to take out your rage on a computer mouse, think about how you’d cope without one.
Hint: You wouldn’t.
