A MOUSE FROM SPACE

When you purchase a desktop computer, a mouse will usually also be included. However, that wasn’t always the case. The mouse was created by American engineer Doug Engelbart back in the late 1960s for the Stanford Research Institute. Engelbart’s research was funded by NASA, who hoped to make computers, which at the time were being used as flight control systems and for simulations, more interactive. What Engelbart created was a handheld device that used two perpendicular wheels that were turned by pushing the mouse on the flat surface below it. The movement of these wheels would then move the cursor on the computer screen. Engelbart presented the new ‘mouse’ at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in 1968, where thousands of engineers witnessed it for the first time.

Since then the humble mouse has undergone several upgrades, with trackpads and laser tracking becoming the new normal.

NASA hoped to make computers more interactive.

The prototype Stanford Research Institute (SRI) mouse from the early 1960s.

A computer mouse resembles the tiny mammal, with a cable for a tail.