The computer rat vs the computer mouse

Douglas Engelbart invented a large foot-operated control called a rat for the computer in the late 1950s but it never caught on. What did catch on 20 years after he invented it was the computer mouse.

Inspired by Vannevar Bush‘s call to make knowledge widely and freely available, Engelbart drew on his experience as a radar technician during World War II where he saw computer pointing devices that roughly resembled the mouse and designed the X-Y position indicator for a display system, for which he earned U.S. patent number #3,541,541 in 1970. He nicknamed it the mouse because of the tail that came out of at the end. 

First computer mouse(In the picture, Engelbart holds the first computer mouse, demonstrated on December 9, 1968.)

First computer with a mouse

The Xerox Star was the first home computer (in the 1970s) to feature a mouse but it was only with the launch of the Apple Lisa in 1983 when the computer mouse started catching on.

Douglas Engelbart inventions

Douglas Engelbart invented or contributed to a number of products, including email, windows and video conferencing. He never received a royalty for his computer mouse invention but did receive something money can’t buy and a computer can’t calculate: international respect and honor.

World’s first video arcade game

10/21/2009. Category: technology. Tags: , , .

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