What was the computer "mouse"?
What was the computer "mouse"?
The computer mouse was a pointing device invented in the 1960s by Douglas Engelbart as a means of avoiding the use of the finger to smear dirt and oil on glass particularly at ATMs and PoS stations.
Wow, this brought back a bunch of memories.
"I ran out of mouse pad." "That's ok grandma just pick the mouse up and put it down where you want it." Picks up mouse, puts it down in the same place "Ok now what?"
Or putting it on the screen where she wanted the pointer to be.
Picks up mouse, puts it down in the same place “Ok now what?”
I was teaching a class for senior citizens once and this one guy kept getting rightclick results when he swore he was leftclicking. At first I suspected someone swapped them in accessibility settings but that wasn't it.
- he really was leftclicking
- and getting rightclick results
- because he was rotating the mouse CCW while in use, so his index finger was over the right mouse button
I never did break him of the habit.
I remember seeing a device in the cellar at a place I worked in the 90s. It was basically a box with a horizontal slot that had a lever sticking out of it. You could move the lever in and out and to the sides which controlled the pointer. I was told it was a proto-mouse of sorts, but it was just collecting dust so never saw it in operation. Could not have been pleasant to use for any extended period of time. Don't remember if it had buttons to click with. Anyone remember seeing something like that?
Lol that's amazing.
It's so weird that I'm typing this reply on a device millions of times more capable than that machine while at the same time, that machine feels a million times more magical to me.
The photo reminds me that the PCjr used an optical mouse with a metal mouse pad.
I still remember that small amount of time that I used a mouse with a metal mousepad (on a Macintosh). It seemed like those style of optical mice only lasted for a very brief amount of time and was a tad finicky. Still, I wonder how many folks never knew that mice using metal mousepads even existed.
The Sun workstations also had the optical mouse with a metal pad.