, a pre-cursor of the Internet that allowed computer users to share information stored on their computers. )
MOUSE TALE Douglas Engelbart originally invented the mouse as a way to navigate his oNLine System (NLS), a pre-cursor of the Internet that allowed computer users to share information stored on their computers.
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A little more than 40 years ago Douglas Engelbart introduced his "X–Y position indicator for a display system"—more commonly known today as the computer mouse—during a 90-minute presentation on a "computer-based, interactive, multiconsole display system" at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, Calif. This event—attended by some 1,000 computer professionals—would later be called by many the "mother of all demos" and would introduce a number of computing capabilities largely taken for granted today: the mouse, hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking.
Engelbart, now 84, filed the patent in 1967 but had to wait three years for the U.S. to acknowledge his technology, which provided the tool needed to navigate graphics-filled computer screens with a simple motion of the hand rather than by wading through screens filled with green-tinted text using keys or a light pencil pressed up against a computer monitor. "I don't know why we call it a mouse," he said during the demo. "It started that way, and we never did change it."
The original mouse, housed in a wooden box twice as high as today's mice and with three buttons on top, moved with the help of two wheels on its underside rather than a rubber trackball. The wheels—one for the horizontal and another for the vertical—sat at right angles. When the mouse was moved, the vertical wheel rolled along the surface while the horizontal wheel slid sideways. Mice grew more ergonomic over time and have adopted trackballs, lasers and LEDs, but the premise is the same—the computer records both the distance and speed at which the mouse travels and turns that information into binary code that it can understand and plot on a display screen.
Engelbart originally invented the mouse as a way to navigate his oNLine System (NLS), a precursor of the Internet that allowed computer users to share information stored on their computers. NLS, which Engelbart developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA—now DARPA), was also the first system to successfully use hypertext to link files (making information available through a click of the mouse).
Because his patent for the mouse expired before it became widely used with personal computers in the mid-1980s, Engelbart garnered neither widespread recognition nor royalties for his invention. Mouse technology found its way from Engelbart's lab to the Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1971, when Bill English, a computer engineer who had worked for Engelbart at SRI, joined PARC. Xerox was the first to sell a computer system that came with a mouse—the 8010 Star Information System in 1981, but the term "mouse" wouldn't become a part of the modern lexicon until Apple made it standard equipment with its original Macintosh, which debuted in 1984. The emergence of the Microsoft Windows operating system and Web browsers hastened the mouse's pervasiveness throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century.
Engelbart's own work at SRI came to an end in 1989, when McDonnell Douglas Corp. (his ultimate employer there after his division at SRI had changed owners a few times) shut down his lab. That year, Engelbart formed the Bootstrap Institute (now known as the Doug Engelbart Institute) , a consulting firm in Menlo Park through which he still encourages researchers to share findings and build on one another's achievements.
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8 Comments
Add CommentThank you to you Sir, Douglas Englebart, for your pioneering work!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou really do deserve a Knighthood for your invention.
Maybe you are not 'widely acknowledged' today, but your name will live on in human history, so long as humans exist.
Thank you to you Sir, Douglas Engelbart!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou really do deserve a Knighthood for your work.
I hope you get the recognition your work so clearly warrants.
Your name will live on in history, so long as humans are here to record and read their own history.
Sorry A,Viirlard, but I can't agree. The mouse may have been around earlier, but there were at least two generation of personal computers that got along fine without it, CPM and DOS. I had a DOS Internet program that did email fine, and could access the web, though crudely. I think there were ways to do it better without the mouse. You may see mention of "keyboard shortcuts, which implies you can do it quicker without the mouse. GUIs may be easier to learn, but harder to use, and which do you want to do the most of? The one thing I liked about Windows was paragraphs automatically reforming when you change window size, but even that doesn't often work anymore. Of course to really work for web access for instance, we'd have to also have an intelligent keyboard. My preference would be 'modifier keys', Shift, Ctrl, Alt etc., under the thumbs for many more easily accessible meanings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisApparently you missed the whole point of the article. If this was an article on DOS your comments would be valid. The fact is that the vast majority of people today utilzie a mouse and not DOS commands, and by far the mouse is a simple but marvelous invention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Mr Engelbart for making millions of people avoid learning various keystroke commands for their everyday computer tasks. Most people today have way to much to think about as we multitask our busy lives.
Greg C
Xerox also for a short time had an input device called a CAT,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa round version of the touch pad now seen on many laptops
In the new book "The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart" by Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg in conversation with Douglas Engelbart he explains how he came up with the idea for the mouse. htpp://engelbartbook.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, "mouses" is the correct plural for the computer mouse since new lexical items take the regular form--this according to Wired Magazine (I forget what issue, it's been a few years now). I wholeheartedly agree, though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is always nice when a creative person finally gets credit for his or her achievements. Memorizing whole sets of shortcuts is not the best way (yes, I have used Wordstar in CPM), although a few shortcuts for often repeated tasks is better than using the mouse all the time. But a well designed GUI with a mouse allows you to start work instantly, which is the big advantage. The only thing better will probably be when a truly capable voice-driven system is made available - in all languages.
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