16/07/2013
HISTORY OF MOUSE
The earliest known publication of the term mouse as a computer pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".[1] A false etymology exists, claiming "mouse" is an acronym for "Manually Operated User Selection Equipment".
The online Oxford Dictionaries entry for mouse states the plural for the small rodent is mice, while the plural for the small computer connected device is either mice or mouses. However, in the use section of the entry it states that the more common plural is mice, and that the first recorded use of the term in the plural is mice as well[2] (though it cites a 1984 use of mice when there were actually several earlier ones, such as J. C. R. Licklider's "The Computer as a Communication Device" of 1968[3]).
The fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language endorses computer mice as the correct plural forms for computer mouse. Some authors of technical documents may prefer either mouse devices or the more generic pointing devices. The plural mouses treats mouse as a "headless noun".[4]
Early mice
Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov. 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent 3,835,464. Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent 3,987,685
The world's first trackball invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project in 1952. It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball.
The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project in 1952. It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project.[5]
Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) invented the first mouse prototype in 1963,[citation needed] with the assistance of his lead engineer Bill English.[6] They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse.[7] Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.[8] The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect via the Augmentation Research Center.[9][10]
The first computer mouse, held by inventor Douglas Engelbart, showing the wheels that make contact with the working surface
Several other experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS) exploited different body movements – for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose – but ultimately the mouse won out because of its speed and convenience.[11] The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis.
Engelbart received patent US3,541,541 on November 17, 1970 for an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System".[12] At the time, Engelbart envisaged that users would hold the mouse continuously in one hand and type on a five-key chord keyset with the other.[13] The concept was preceded in the 19th century by the telautograph, which also anticipated the fax machine.
The first ball-based computer mouse in 1968, Telefunken Rollkugel RKS 100-86 for their TR 86 process computer system
On 2 October 1968, just a few months before Engelbart released his demo on 9 December 1968, a mouse device named Rollkugel (German for "rolling ball") was released that had been developed and published by the German company Telefunken. As the name suggests and unlike Engelbart's mouse, the Telefunken model already had a ball, as seen in most later models up to the present. It was based on an earlier trackball-like device (also named Rollkugel) embedded into radar flight control desks, which had been developed around 1965 by a team led by Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for the German Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung (de) as part of their TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86[14] vector graphics terminal. When the development for the Telefunken main frame TR 440 (de) began in 1965, Mallebrein and his team came up with the idea of "reversing" the existing Rollkugel into a moveable mouse-like device, so that customers did not have to be bothered with mounting holes for the earlier trackball device. Together with light pens and trackballs, it was offered as optional input device for their system since 1968. Some samples, installed at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum in Munich in 1972, are still well preserved.[15][16] Telefunken considered the invention too small to apply for a patent on their device.
The Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use, and is the grandfather of computers that utilize the mouse.[17] Inspired by PARC's Alto, the Lilith, a computer, which had been developed by a team around Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zürich between 1978 and 1980, provided a mouse as well. The third marketed version of an integrated mouse shipped as a part of a computer and intended for personal computer navigation came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the 1984 appearance of the Macintosh 128K, which included an updated version of the original Lisa Mouse. In 1982, Microsoft made the decision to make the MS-DOS program Microsoft Word mouse-compatible and developed the first PC-compatible mouse. Microsoft's mouse shipped in 1983, thus beginning Microsoft Hardware.[4] In 1984 PC columnist John C. Dvorak stated the mouse as a reason the Macintosh would fail.[18]
