The evolution of the computer mouse in pictures - ITespresso.es

His name was not well known, although his main invention is in the hands of people around the world on a daily basis: he was Douglas Engelbart and the invention at issue in computer mouse . The mouse father died this week at age 88 after a life dedicated to, as he said, “increase the human intellect.” Something that boiled down to make computers more intuitive and easy to use (a view that in the 60s, when there were no graphical interfaces and computers occupied entire rooms, could be difficult to understand).

Engelbart began to work and develop the idea of ??the mouse in the 60s and patented in the ’70s. At that time it was a two-wheeled mechanism placed perpendicular covered by a wooden frame (quite square, the issue of ergonomics still was not a priority) device that Engelbart showed for the first time in December 1968 to an audience that had never heard of something like this (and possibly not even raise that was necessary).

But Douglas Engelbart’s contributions to the world of technology were not there: in that same presentation, 1968, Engelbart also showed WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get – What you see is what you get) with hyperlinks , combined text and graphics, discussed the future of ARPAnet (then still very in diapers) … “We were not just designing a tool, were designing an entire system for knowledge work” , said Engelbert years later.

The mouse, however, was the most important. As told in The New York Times, Douglas Engelbert, who designed the mouse with Bill Inglés, never strongly agreed that allthough being called “mouse” was what they called the researchers “so affectionate” to the device, but Engelbart believed not sound very professional. The official name of the visionary would have wanted is to transcend “XY position indicator for a display system” . Of course, the mouse was easier to say and understand.

Since that first wooden mouse to mice today, with all kinds of forms and variations of operation, the evolution of that “position indicator” has gone through many phases . Mice ball, optical, laser, the discovery of rounded forms, finding ergonomics … These are some of the key moments in the history of the mouse.

The first mouse

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