Last updated on May 25th, 2023 at 12:43 pm
Why computer Mouse was invented?
The modern computer mouse we use today is an evolved and advanced version of the computer mouse. Before the invention of the computer mouse, people used the arrow keys on the keyboard to toggle around the screen to point to a particular area on display. Operating a computer system in this manner wasn’t a reliable method because the arrow couldn’t move freely. Innovation was needed in this domain to make it easy to operate computers with a low-level, initial graphical user interface. Meanwhile, there was a secret design for the earlier mouse that existed and was in use by militaries like the UK, and Canadian navy. That earlier design wasn’t called the mouse instead that was called a trackball. We’ll discuss its structure later in this article. Till that let’s talk about who invented the mouse and what was that year exactly.
Who invented the computer mouse in what year?
An engineer namely Douglas Carl Engelbart along with Bill English designed and invented to first ever computer mouse in 1964 and later in November 1970, they patented their mouse. The first computer mouse was named Prototype Engelbart Mouse. The appearance of the first operational computer mouse was rectangular in shape, made up of wood, and contained a pair of moving (rotating) disks that could rotate either in the X direction or Y direction at a single time. In this design, there was only a single button to interact with the computer. Although this wasn’t a perfect design or a masterpiece yet it was a great invention of modern computing.
According to the inventors, their main competition was the light pen, joystick, and trackball devices. These were available at that time but all of them had their own drawbacks like the light pen having more weight and it also a wired connection which was disturbing while it was in use. Joysticks weren’t good enough and the final option was trackballs that were used by the military for decades. The team that was developing the first computer mouse had the intention to test their mouse by quickly pointing and selecting particular letters from a text. Someone from the team called this new gadget MOUSE because it looked similar to a mouse in shape.
The structure of the first Computer Mouse?
Design & Structure of the first Computer Mouse:
The first computer mouse had a wooden build rectangle shape with a tiny button on its top right corner and a wire with a serial port connector.
Design & Structure of Trackballs & Ball-based Mouse:
Trackball had similarities with the ball mouse but ball mice used the ball downside meanwhile the trackballs used the ball on its top. All of its four sides had a spinning disk that could move with the contact of that ball and the movement was judged in that manner.
Evolution of Computer Mouse
The ball-based mice opened a door to a new era of communication and interaction with computers, till 1984, the mouse devices weren’t popular in public when Apple launched its Macintosh with the mouse in a partnership with Xerox. Meanwhile, Microsoft also sold the mice with its systems and the computer mice got quick popularity. After that many changes and modifications were made in the computer mouse’s design and strature and nowadays we are enjoying computer mice super responsive and with lots of functionalities.