History of Computer Mouse

One friday afternoon I was getting bugged in office and was just staring at the mouse having no better work to do,then many questions arouse in my mind about its invention and inventer.So googled and found this piece of information..

Douglas Carl Englebart was the man behind the invention of computer mouse in 1968 along with NLS (oNLine System) which introduced two dimensional text editing.

Computer mouse is now one of the simplest and most effective input devices that we have ever known.Before the computer mice hit the market, the only way to move the cursor on the computer screen was to use the keyboard arrow keys. However, the launch of Apple Macintosh with computer mouse in 1984 started a new era in the evolution of computing devices. It was Microsoft and its OS Windows 3.1 with its graphical user interface that made mouse so popular device in the following years.

Evolution
Before Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple computer designed the computer mouse for his new Macintosh in 1984, there were a few input devices like light pens, graphics tablets and joy sticks that were used as alternative to keyboards during the nineteen seventies. The earlier computers (before nineteen seventies) used interfaces like punch cards or teletype machines. The screen editors were introduced only after 1970’s and the arrow keys were used to move the cursor on the computer screen while editing the text.

Although the graphics tablets and joy sticks were used as pointing devices before computer mouse was introduced, they were expensive and also occupied more space on the desk.
The first computer mice were mechanical type and had a ball that rolls under the mouse body. When the mouse moves on the pad, the rollers detect the direction and the speed. The movement of rollers was sensed by light emitting diode (LED) and the IC connected to it, converted it to the code understandable by the computer. However, the performance of the mechanical mice depended on the rollers and the sensors which need to be clean and free from any debris.

Apple continued to use mouse as an input device in nineteen eighties, while PC users had to wait until Microsoft to launch its popular Windows operating system 3.1 (GUI) to get all the benefits of using a computer mouse. In the following years, the newer versions of Microsoft Windows hit the market and made the mouse as a standard pointing device for their products.

The next generation of computer mice designed by Agilent used all electronic LED and DSP ((Digital Signal Processor chip) devices could sense the data even better and were more precise and rapid and enabled much smoother movement of cursor on the computer screen. These mice also allowed the users to customize the speed of movement and other options like tracking etc.
With the introduction of optical mouse, the mouse pad became unnecessary and so was the cleaning of internal parts of computer mice.

Logitech, the pioneer in the computer mouse technology, introduced cordless mice which do not need any cable but worked on the same principles of earlier computer mouse models. In addition, they came with rechargeable batteries.

Microsoft introduced another useful feature - the rolling wheel between right and left buttons. The rolling wheel allowed the user to scroll up and down without the need to drag the cursor. Newer optical mice came with extra buttons (the side buttons) that helped the user to move the cursor backward and forward in the latest OS versions like Windows XP.