This Week, The Mouse Turns Forty

Invented by a team of researchers led by Doug Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute in California in 1968, computer’s most dynamic input device, the “mouse”, has entered into its 40's on Monday, December 1, 2008. Image Credit: SRI

This Week, The Mouse Turns Forty

Just when you feel you have this age thing figured out, along comes an event that sets you right back on you heels and makes you feel OLD again!

On Monday, the invention of the computer mouse happened forty years ago. The first mouse was crafted out of wood, had a click-button built into the top and had a dual-wheel tracking movement mechanism on the bottom surface.

The mouse combined with Graphical User Interface (GUI) software ARE the computer to most users of the computer.

Today, the Mouse may incorporate a 2D imaging camera to read printed symbologies for automation, motion sensing gesture control for gaming (as found in the Wii and iPhone), and user identification security.

ELECOM won Good Design Award 2008 in 4 series of products! - Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization announced the award winners for this year’s Good Design Award on October 10, 2008. ELECOM CO., LTD. (Head office: Chuo-ku, Osaka; President: Junji Hada)　won the award in 4 series of products (including the EGG MOUSE). /// EGG MOUSE is a simple but expressive shape of mouse with comfort grip. It focuses on only basic functions which are required by most users. It features the natural shape of an egg which is familiar with everyone: sleek and rounded surface. Once you see an EGG MOUSE, your sensory experience appeals to you intuitively and you feel like touching it. Image Credit: ELECOM CO., LTD.

This excerpted and edited from News:Lite -

Computer mouse is 40 years old today
By: news:lite - December 1, 2008 3:57 PM

The chances are your hand is on one right now, if so look down and wish your mouse a Happy Birthday.

While the odd device above looks like it would be more at home in a tool shop, this is actually the world's first mouse which was unveiled to the world 40 years ago today.
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The cable which hung from the back [of the wood block] gained it the name 'mouse' from researchers.

Designer, Douglas Engelbart came up with the idea in the early 1960s while exploring the interactions between humans and computers at California’s Stanford Research Institute.

In 1964 his team came up with the first prototype but it was four years later when the mouse was revealed to the world in a 90-minute public multimedia demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.
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The first commercial mouse was released in 1981 with the launch of the Xerox Star computer, but it was only in 1984 after Apple acquired the technology, it became popular with the launch of The Apple Macintosh.
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