who invented the mouse

"Mouses" redirects here. For other uses, see Mouse (disambiguation).

A computer mouse with the most common standard features: two buttons and a scroll wheel, which can also act as a third button.

In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows for fine control of a graphical user interface.
Physically, a mouse consists of an object held in one's hand, with one or more buttons. Mice often also feature other elements, such as touch surfaces and "wheels", which enable additional control and dimensional input.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Naming
• 2 History
• 3 Operation
  • 3.1 Mouse gestures
  • 3.2 Specific uses
• 4 Variants
  • 4.1 Mechanical mice
  • 4.2 Optical and laser mice
  • 4.3 Inertial and gyroscopic mice
  • 4.4 3D mice
  • 4.5 Tactile mice
  • 4.6 Pucks
  • 4.7 Ergonomic mice
  • 4.8 Gaming mice
• 5 Connectivity and communication protocols
  • 5.1 Serial interface and protocol
  • 5.2 PS/2 interface and protocol
  • 5.3 Apple Desktop Bus
  • 5.4 USB
  • 5.5 Cordless or wireless
  • 5.6 Atari standard joystick connectivity
• 6 Multiple-mouse systems
• 7 Buttons
• 8 Scrolling
• 9 Mouse speed
• 10 Mousepads
• 11 In the marketplace
• 12 Use in games
  • 12.1 First-person shooters
  • 12.2 Home consoles
• 13 See also
• 14 References
• 15 Further reading
• 16 External links

Naming[edit]

The earliest known publication of the term mouse as a computer pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".^[1]
The online Oxford Dictionaries entry for mouse states the plural for the small rodent is mice, while the plural for the small computer connected device is either mice or mouses. However, in the use section of the entry it states that the more common plural is mice, and that the first recorded use of the term in the plural is mice as well^[2] (though it cites a 1984 use of mice when there were actually several earlier ones, such as J. C. R. Licklider's "The Computer as a Communication Device" of 1968^[3]). According to the fifth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language the plural can be either "mice" or "mouses".^[4]

History[edit]

The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a post-World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called Comprehensive Display System (CDS). Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service. Benjamin's project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented a ball tracker called "roller ball", for this purpose.^[5][6]
The device was patented in 1947,^[6] but only a prototype using a metal ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built^[5] and the device was kept as a military secret.^[5]
Another early trackball was built by British electrical engineer Kenyon Taylor in collaboration with Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff. Taylor was part of the original Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR (Digital Automated Tracking and Resolving) system in 1952.^[7]
DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamin's display. The trackball used four disks to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. Several rollers provided mechanical support. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and contacts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, producing pulses of output with each movement of the ball. By counting the pulses, the physical movement of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks, and sent the resulting data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulation radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project as well.^[8][9]

Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov. 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent 3,835,464. Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent 3,987,685

Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) invented his first mouse prototype in the 1960s with the assistance of his lead engineer Bill English.^[10] They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse.^[11] Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.^[12] The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect via the Augmentation Research Center.^[13][14]

Inventor Douglas Engelbart holding the first computer mouse,^[15] showing the wheels that make contact with the working surface.

Several other experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS) exploited different body movements – for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose – but ultimately the mouse won out because of its speed and convenience.^[16] The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis. At the time of the "Mother of All Demos", Englebart's group had been using their second generation, 3-button mouse for about a year. See the image of that mouse at Picture showing 2nd G mouse (A public domain version of this image would be nice.)
On 2 October 1968, just a few months before Engelbart released his demo on 9 December 1968, a mouse device named Rollkugel (German for "rolling ball") was released that had been developed and published by the German company Telefunken. As the name suggests and unlike Engelbart's mouse, the Telefunken model already had a ball. It was based on an earlier trackball-like device (also named Rollkugel) that was embedded into radar flight control desks. This had been developed around 1965 by a team led by Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for the German Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung as part of their TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86^[17] vector graphics terminal.

The first ball-based computer mouse in 1968, Telefunken Rollkugel RKS 100-86 for their TR 86 process computer system.

When the development for the Telefunken main frame TR 440 (de) began in 1965, Mallebrein and his team came up with the idea of "reversing" the existing Rollkugel into a moveable mouse-like device, so that customers did not have to be bothered with mounting holes for the earlier trackball device. Together with light pens and trackballs, it was offered as optional input device for their system since 1968. Some samples, installed at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum in Munich in 1972, are still well preserved.^[18][19] Telefunken considered the invention too small to apply for a patent on their device.
The Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use in 1973, and is regarded as the grandfather of computers that utilize the mouse.^[20] Inspired by PARC's Alto, the Lilith, a computer which had been developed by a team around Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zürich between 1978 and 1980, provided a mouse as well. The third marketed version of an integrated mouse shipped as a part of a computer and intended for personal computer navigation came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981.
By 1982 the Xerox 8010 was probably the best-known computer with a mouse, and the forthcoming Apple Lisa was rumored to use one, but the peripheral remained obscure; Jack Hawley of The Mouse House reported that one buyer for a large organization believed at first that his company sold lab mice. Hawley, who manufactured mice for Xerox, stated that "Practically, I have the market all to myself right now"; a Hawley mouse cost $415.^[21] That year Microsoft made the decision to make the MS-DOS program Microsoft Word mouse-compatible, and developed the first PC-compatible mouse. Microsoft's mouse shipped in 1983, thus beginning Microsoft Hardware.^[22] However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the 1984 appearance of the Macintosh 128K, which included an updated version of the Lisa Mouse^[23] and the Atari ST in 1985.

Operation[edit]

Further information: Point and click

A mouse typically controls the motion of a pointer in two dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). The mouse turns movements of the hand backward and forward, left and right into equivalent electronic signals that in turn are used to move the pointer.
The relative movements of the mouse on the surface are applied to the position of the pointer on the screen, which signals the point where actions of the user take place, so that the hand movements are replicated by the pointer.^[24] Clicking or hovering (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an area) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical interfaces) through small images called "icons" and other elements. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper notebook, and clicking while the cursor hovers this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a window.
Different ways of operating the mouse cause specific things to happen in the GUI:^[24]

• Click: pressing and releasing a button.
  • (left) Single-click: clicking the main button.
  • (left) Double-click: clicking the button two times in quick succession counts as a different gesture than two separate single clicks.
  • (left) Triple-click: clicking the button three times in quick succession.
  • Right-click: clicking the secondary button.
  • Middle-click: clicking the tertiary button.
• Drag and drop: pressing and holding a button, then moving the mouse without releasing. (Using the command "drag with the right mouse button" instead of just "drag" when one instructs a user to drag an object while holding the right mouse button down instead of the more commonly used left mouse button.)
• Mouse button chording (a.k.a. Rocker navigation).
  • Combination of right-click then left-click.
  • Combination of left-click then right-click or keyboard letter.
  • Combination of left or right-click and the mouse wheel.
• Clicking while holding down a modifier key.
• Moving the pointer a long distance: When a practical limit of mouse movement is reached, one lifts up the mouse, brings it to the opposite edge of the working area while it is held above the surface, and then replaces it down onto the working surface. This is often not necessary, because acceleration software detects fast movement, and moves the pointer significantly faster in proportion than for slow mouse motion.
• Multi-touch: this method is similar to a multi-touch trackpad on a laptop with support for tap input for multiple fingers, the most famous example being the Apple Magic Mouse.

Mouse gestures[edit]

Main article: Pointing device gesture

Users can also employ mice gesturally; meaning that a stylized motion of the mouse cursor itself, called a "gesture", can issue a command or map to a specific action. For example, in a drawing program, moving the mouse in a rapid "x" motion over a shape might delete the shape.
Gestural interfaces occur more rarely than plain pointing-and-clicking; and people often find them more difficult to use, because they require finer motor-control from the user. However, a few gestural conventions have become widespread, including the drag and drop gesture, in which:

1. The user presses the mouse button while the mouse cursor hovers over an interface object
2. The user moves the cursor to a different location while holding the button down
3. The user releases the mouse button

For example, a user might drag-and-drop a picture representing a file onto a picture of a trash can, thus instructing the system to delete the file.
Standard semantic gestures include:

• Crossing-based goal
• Drag and drop
• Menu traversal
• Pointing
• Rollover (Mouseover)
• Selection

Specific uses[edit]

Other uses of the mouse's input occur commonly in special application-domains. In interactive three-dimensional graphics, the mouse's motion often translates directly into changes in the virtual objects' or camera's orientation. For example, in the first-person shooter genre of games (see below), players usually employ the mouse to control the direction in which the virtual player's "head" faces: moving the mouse up will cause the player to look up, revealing the view above the player's head. A related function makes an image of an object rotate, so that all sides can be examined. 3D design and animation software often modally chords many different combinations to allow objects and cameras to be rotated and moved through space with the few axes of movement mice can detect.
When mice have more than one button, software may assign different functions to each button. Often, the primary (leftmost in a right-handed configuration) button on the mouse will select items, and the secondary (rightmost in a right-handed) button will bring up a menu of alternative actions applicable to that item. For example, on platforms with more than one button, the Mozilla web browser will follow a link in response to a primary button click, will bring up a contextual menu of alternative actions for that link in response to a secondary-button click, and will often open the link in a new tab or window in response to a click with the tertiary (middle) mouse button.

Variants[edit]

Mechanical mice[edit]

Operating an opto-mechanical mouse. moving the mouse turns the ball. X and Y rollers grip the ball and transfer movement Optical encoding disks include light holes. Infrared LEDs shine through the disks. Sensors gather light pulses to convert to X and Y vectors.

The German company Telefunken published on their early ball mouse on October 2, 1968.^[18] Telefunken's mouse was sold as optional equipment for their computer systems. Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse,^[25] created a ball mouse in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC.^[26]
The ball mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It came as part of the hardware package of the Xerox Alto computer. Perpendicular chopper wheels housed inside the mouse's body chopped beams of light on the way to light sensors, thus detecting in their turn the motion of the ball. This variant of the mouse resembled an inverted trackball and became the predominant form used with personal computers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The Xerox PARC group also settled on the modern technique of using both hands to type on a full-size keyboard and grabbing the mouse when required.

Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed. The scroll wheel is grey, to the right of the ball.

The ball mouse has two freely rotating rollers. They are located 90 degrees apart. One roller detects the forward–backward motion of the mouse and other the left–right motion. Opposite the two rollers is a third one (white, in the photo, at 45 degrees) that is spring-loaded to push the ball against the other two rollers. Each roller is on the same shaft as an encoder wheel that has slotted edges; the slots interrupt infrared light beams to generate electrical pulses that represent wheel movement. Each wheel's disc, however, has a pair of light beams, located so that a given beam becomes interrupted, or again starts to pass light freely, when the other beam of the pair is about halfway between changes.
Simple logic circuits interpret the relative timing to indicate which direction the wheel is rotating. This incremental rotary encoder scheme is sometimes called quadrature encoding of the wheel rotation, as the two optical sensor produce signals that are in approximately quadrature phase. The mouse sends these signals to the computer system via the mouse cable, directly as logic signals in very old mice such as the Xerox mice, and via a data-formatting IC in modern mice. The driver software in the system converts the signals into motion of the mouse cursor along X and Y axes on the computer screen.

Hawley Mark II Mice from the Mouse House

The ball is mostly steel, with a precision spherical rubber surface. The weight of the ball, given an appropriate working surface under the mouse, provides a reliable grip so the mouse's movement is transmitted accurately. Ball mice and wheel mice were manufactured for Xerox by Jack Hawley, doing business as The Mouse House in Berkeley, California, starting in 1975.^[27][28] Based on another invention by Jack Hawley, proprietor of the Mouse House, Honeywell produced another type of mechanical mouse.^[29][30] Instead of a ball, it had two wheels rotating at off axes. Key Tronic later produced a similar product.^[31]
Modern computer mice took form at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the inspiration of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud and at the hands of engineer and watchmaker André Guignard.^[32] This new design incorporated a single hard rubber mouseball and three buttons, and remained a common design until the mainstream adoption of the scroll-wheel mouse during the 1990s.^[33] In 1985, René Sommer added a microprocessor to Nicoud's and Guignard's design.^[34] Through this innovation, Sommer is credited with inventing a significant component of the mouse, which made it more "intelligent;"^[34] though optical mice from Mouse Systems had incorporated microprocessors by 1984.^[35]
Another type of mechanical mouse, the "analog mouse" (now generally regarded as obsolete), uses potentiometers rather than encoder wheels, and is typically designed to be plug compatible with an analog joystick. The "Color Mouse", originally marketed by RadioShack for their Color Computer (but also usable on MS-DOS machines equipped with analog joystick ports, provided the software accepted joystick input) was the best-known example.

Optical and laser mice[edit]

A wireless optical mouse

A standard wireless mouse and its connector

Main article: Optical mouse

Optical mice rely entirely on one or more light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and an imaging array of photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, eschewing the internal moving parts a mechanical mouse uses in addition to its optics. A laser mouse is an optical mouse that uses coherent (laser) light.
The earliest optical mice detected movement on pre-printed mousepad surfaces, whereas the modern LED optical mouse works on most opaque diffuse surfaces; it is usually unable to detect movement on specular surfaces like polished stone. Laser diodes are also used for better resolution and precision, improving performance on opaque specular surfaces. Battery powered, wireless optical mice flash the LED intermittently to save power, and only glow steadily when movement is detected.

Inertial and gyroscopic mice[edit]

Often called "air mice" since they do not require a surface to operate, inertial mice use a tuning fork or other accelerometer (US Patent 4787051, published in 1988) to detect rotary movement for every axis supported. The most common models (manufactured by Logitech and Gyration) work using 2 degrees of rotational freedom and are insensitive to spatial translation. The user requires only small wrist rotations to move the cursor, reducing user fatigue or "gorilla arm".
Usually cordless, they often have a switch to deactivate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user freedom of movement without affecting the cursor position. A patent for an inertial mouse claims that such mice consume less power than optically based mice, and offer increased sensitivity, reduced weight and increased ease-of-use.^[36] In combination with a wireless keyboard an inertial mouse can offer alternative ergonomic arrangements which do not require a flat work surface, potentially alleviating some types of repetitive motion injuries related to workstation posture.

3D mice[edit]

Also known as bats,^[37] flying mice, or wands,^[38] these devices generally function through ultrasound and provide at least three degrees of freedom. Probably the best known example would be 3Dconnexion/Logitech's SpaceMouse from the early 1990s. In the late 1990s Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons. The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station.^[39] Despite a certain appeal, it was finally discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.
A recent consumer 3D pointing device is the Wii Remote. While primarily a motion-sensing device (that is, it can determine its orientation and direction of movement), Wii Remote can also detect its spatial position by comparing the distance and position of the lights from the IR emitter using its integrated IR camera (since the nunchuk accessory lacks a camera, it can only tell its current heading and orientation). The obvious drawback to this approach is that it can only produce spatial coordinates while its camera can see the sensor bar.
A mouse-related controller called the SpaceBall^[40] has a ball placed above the work surface that can easily be gripped. With spring-loaded centering, it sends both translational as well as angular displacements on all six axes, in both directions for each. In November 2010 a German Company called Axsotic introduced a new concept of 3D mouse called 3D Spheric Mouse. This new concept of a true six degree-of-freedom input device uses a ball to rotate in 3 axes without any limitations.^[