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First Computer Mouse Prototype

First Computer Mouse Prototype

Image creditKazuhisa Otsubo (original SRI prototype, lent by SRI International)
CC BY 2.0 ↗

First Computer Mouse Prototype

Year
1964
Creator
Douglas Engelbart, Bill English
Company
Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
Location
Menlo Park, California

Description

This first mouse is a carved wooden block with two wheels at right angles that measure its movement over a surface. Bill English of SRI built it in 1964 from a design by Douglas Engelbart.

Importance

With the mouse, a person moved a cursor and pointed directly at text and objects on a screen. Engelbart used it in his 1968 NLS demonstration in San Francisco. Xerox PARC later gave its Alto computer a mouse, and personal computers adopted it from the Alto.

Interesting fact

SRI's patent, issued in 1970 as U.S. Patent 3,541,541, calls the device an X-Y position indicator for a display system.

Sources

  1. Computer Mouse and Interactive Computing ↗SRI International
  2. US Patent 3,541,541: X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System (D. C. Engelbart) ↗U.S. Patent Office, via Google Patents · 1970-11-17
  3. Milestones: The Xerox Alto Establishes Personal Networked Computing, 1972-1983 ↗IEEE, Engineering and Technology History Wiki · 2024-05-17
  4. Firsts: The Mouse ↗Doug Engelbart Institute