Computer mouse
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A computer mouse (plural mice; rarely mouses)[nb 1] is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of the pointer (called a cursor) on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer.
The first public demonstration of a mouse controlling a computer system was done by Douglas Engelbart in 1968 as part of The Mother of All Demos.[1] Mice originally used two separate wheels to directly track movement across a surface: one in the x-dimension and one in the Y. Later, the standard design shifted to use a ball rolling on a surface to detect motion, in turn connected to internal rollers. Most modern mice use optical movement detection with no moving parts. Though originally all mice were connected to a computer by a cable, many modern mice are cordless, relying on short-range radio communication with the connected system.
In addition to moving a cursor, computer mice have one or more buttons to allow operations such as the selection of a menu item on the associated display. Mice often also feature other elements, such as touch surfaces and scroll wheels, which enable additional control and dimensional input.
Etymology
The earliest known written use of the term mouse in reference to a computer pointing device is in Bill English's July 1965 publication, "Computer-Aided Display Control".[2] This likely originated from its resemblance to the shape and size of a mouse, with the cord resembling its tail.[3][4] The popularity of wireless mice without cords makes the resemblance less obvious.
According to Roger Bates, a hardware designer under English, the term also came about because the cursor on the screen was, for an unknown reason, referred to as "CAT" and was seen by the team as if it would be chasing the new desktop device.[5][6]
The plural for the small rodent is always "mice" in modern usage. The plural for a computer mouse is either "mice" or "mouses" according to most dictionaries, with "mice" being more common.[7] The first recorded plural usage is "mice"; the online Oxford Dictionaries cites a 1984 use, and earlier uses include J. C. R. Licklider's "The Computer as a Communication Device" of 1968.[8]
History
Stationary trackballs
The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a post-World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called the Comprehensive Display System (CDS). Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service. Benjamin's project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented what they called a "roller ball" for this purpose.[9][10] The device was patented in 1947,[10] but only a prototype using a metal ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built, and the device was kept as a military secret.[9]
Another early trackball was built by Kenyon Taylor, a British electrical engineer working in collaboration with Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff. Taylor was part of the original Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR (Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving) system in 1952.[11]
DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamin's display. The trackball used four disks to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. Several rollers provided mechanical support. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, producing pulses of output with each movement of the ball. By counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks and sent the resulting data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, since it was a secret military project.[12][13]
Engelbart's first "mouse"
Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) has been credited in published books by Thierry Bardini,[15] Paul Ceruzzi,[16] Howard Rheingold,[17] and several others[18][19][20] as the inventor of the computer mouse. Engelbart was also recognized as such in various obituary titles after his death in July 2013.[21][22][23][24]
By 1963, Engelbart had already established a research lab at SRI, the Augmentation Research Center (ARC), to pursue his objective of developing both hardware and software computer technology to "augment" human intelligence. That November, while attending a conference on computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Engelbart began to ponder how to adapt the underlying principles of the planimeter to inputting X- and Y-coordinate data.[15] On 14 November 1963, he first recorded his thoughts in his personal notebook about something he initially called a "bug", which is a "3-point" form could have a "drop point and 2 orthogonal wheels".[5][15] He wrote that the "bug" would be "easier" and "more natural" to use, and unlike a stylus, it would stay still when let go, which meant it would be "much better for coordination with the keyboard".[15]
In 1964, Bill English joined ARC, where he helped Engelbart build the first mouse prototype.[4][25] As noted above, this "mouse" was first mentioned in print in a July 1965 report, on which English was the lead author.[3][4][2] On 9 December 1968, Engelbart publicly demonstrated the mouse at what would come to be known as The Mother of All Demos. Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which expired before the mouse became widely used in personal computers.[26] In any event, the invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project of augmenting human intellect.[27][28]
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. One early version was a knee operated device placed under the desk, which kept both hands free for typing. Ultimately the mouse won out because of its speed and convenience.[29][30] The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two potentiometers perpendicular to each other and connected to wheels: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis.[31] At the time of the "Mother of All Demos", Engelbart's group had been using their second-generation, 3-button mouse for about a year.
First rolling-ball mouse
On 2 October 1968, three years after Engelbart's prototype but more than two months before his public demo, a mouse device named Rollkugelsteuerung (German for "Trackball control") was shown in a sales brochure by the German company AEG-Telefunken as an optional input device for the SIG 100 vector graphics terminal, part of the system around their process computer TR 86 and the TR 440 main frame.[32][33][34][35] Based on an even earlier trackball device, the mouse device had been developed by the company in 1966 in what had been a parallel and independent discovery.[35][36] As the name suggests and unlike Engelbart's mouse, the Telefunken model already had a ball (diameter 40 mm, weight 40 g[37]) and two mechanical 4-bit[37][38] rotational position transducers[37][39][38] with Gray code-like[37][38][nb 2] states, allowing easy movement in any direction.[40] The bits remained stable for at least two successive states to relax debouncing requirements.[37][38] This arrangement was chosen so that the data could also be transmitted to the TR 86 front-end process computer and over longer distance telex lines with c. 50 baud.[39] Weighing 465 grams (16.4 oz), the device with a total height of about 7 cm (2.8 in) came in a c. 12 cm (4.7 in) diameter hemispherical injection-molded thermoplastic casing featuring one central push button.[37]
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As noted above, the device was based on an earlier trackball-like device (also named Rollkugel) that was embedded into radar flight control desks.[36] This trackball had been originally developed by a team led by Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for the German Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung (Federal Air Traffic Control). It was part of the corresponding workstation system SAP 300 and the terminal SIG 3001, which had been designed and developed since 1963.[39] Development for the TR 440 main frame began in 1965.[41][39] This led to the development of the TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86[35][33] terminal. Inspired by a discussion with a university customer, Mallebrein came up with the idea of "reversing" the existing Rollkugel trackball into a moveable mouse-like device in 1966,[39] so that customers did not have to be bothered with mounting holes for the earlier trackball device. The device was finished in early 1968,[39] and together with light pens and trackballs, it was commercially offered as an optional input device for their system starting later that year.[32][33][34][42] Not all customers opted to buy the device, which added costs of DM 1,500 per piece to the already up to 20-million DM deal for the main frame, of which only a total of 46 systems were sold or leased.[35][43] They were installed at more than 20 German universities including RWTH Aachen, Technische Universität Berlin, University of Stuttgart[44][45] and Konstanz.[40] Several Rollkugel mice installed at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich in 1972 are well preserved in a museum,[35][46][36] two others survived in a museum at the University of Stuttgart,[44][37][36] two in Hamburg, the one from Aachen at the Computer History Museum in the US,[47][36] and yet another sample was recently donated to the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF) in Paderborn.[48][43] Anecdotal reports claim that Telefunken's attempt to patent the device was rejected by the German Patent Office due to lack of inventiveness.[36][40][43][39] For the air traffic control system, the Mallebrein team had already developed a precursor to touch screens in form of an ultrasonic-curtain-based pointing device in front of the display.[39] In 1970, they developed a device named "Touchinput-Einrichtung" ("touch input device") based on a conductively coated glass screen.[40][39]
First mice on personal computers and workstations
The Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use in 1973 and is regarded as the first modern computer to use a mouse.[49] Alan Kay designed the 16-by-16 mouse cursor icon with its left edge vertical and right edge 45-degrees so it displays well on the bitmap.[50]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 in 1981.
By 1982, the Xerox 8010 was probably the best-known computer with a mouse. The Sun-1 also came with a mouse, and the forthcoming Apple Lisa was rumored to use one, but the peripheral remained obscure; Jack Hawley of The Mouse House reported that one buyer for a large organization believed at first that his company sold lab mice. Hawley, who manufactured mice for Xerox, stated that "Practically, I have the market all to myself right now"; a Hawley mouse cost $415.[51] In 1982, Logitech introduced the P4 Mouse at the Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, its first hardware mouse.[52] That same year Microsoft made the decision to make the MS-DOS program Microsoft Word mouse-compatible, and developed the first PC-compatible mouse. The Microsoft Mouse shipped in 1983, thus beginning the Microsoft Hardware division of the company.[53] However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Macintosh 128K (which included an updated version of the single-button[54] Lisa Mouse) in 1984,[55] and of the Amiga 1000 and the Atari ST in 1985. Aftermarket mice were offered, from the mid 1980s, for many 8-bit home computers, the like of the Commodore 1351 being offered for the Commodore 64 and 128, as was the NEOS Mouse that was also offered for the MSX range, while the AMX Mouse was offered for the Acorn BBC Micro and Electron, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC lines.[56][57][58][59]
Operation
A mouse typically controls the motion of a pointer in two dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). The mouse turns movements of the hand backward and forward, left and right into equivalent electronic signals that in turn are used to move the pointer.
The relative movements of the mouse on the surface are applied to the position of the pointer on the screen, which signals the point where actions of the user take place, so hand movements are replicated by the pointer.[60] Clicking or pointing (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an area) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical interfaces) through small images called "icons" and other elements. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper notebook and clicking while the cursor points at this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a window.
Different ways of operating the mouse cause specific things to happen in the GUI: