Who Make the 1st computer mouse??????????


The computer mouse as we know it today was invented and developed by Douglas Englebart during the 60's and was patented on November 17, 1970. While creating the mouse, Douglas was working at the Stanford Research Institute, a think tank sponsored by Stanford University, and originally referred to the mouse as a "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System." This mouse was first used with the Xerox Alto computer system in 1973. However, because of its lack of success the first widely used mouse is credited to being the mouse found on the Apple Lisa computer. Today, the mouse is now found and used on every computer.

The picture to the right was taken by Maracin Wichary at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, and is an example of what the first computer mouse looked like. As can be seen by the picture, the mouse was much larger than today's mouse, square, and had a small button in the top right corner.


Throughout the '60s and '70s, while working at his own lab (Augmentation Research Center, Stanford Research Institute), Engelbart dedicated himself to creating a hypermedia groupware system called NLS (for oNLine System). Most of his accomplishments, including the computer mouse and windows, were part of NLS.

In 1968, a 90-minute, staged public demonstration of a networked computer system was held at the Augmentation Research Center -- the first public appearance of the mouse, windows, hypermedia with object linking and addressing, and video teleconferencing.

Douglas Engelbart was awarded the 1997 Lemelson-MIT Prize of $500,000, the world's largest single prize for invention and innovation. In 1998, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Currently, Douglas Engelbart is the director of his company, Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, California, which promotes the concept of Collective IQ. Ironically, Bootstrap is housed rent free courtesy of the Logitech Corp., a famous manufacturer of computer mice.

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