Douglas Englebart invented the mouse. This accessory, essential today, has continued to evolve and change shape over the years to suit us better.
It was in 1963 that the first mouse was born. The American Douglas Englebart makes his first wooden prototype. Instead of the laser beam? Wheels, accompanied by a small button on the upper right corner. The whole thing being quite impractical to handle.
Man is a specialist in miniaturization. He filed more than a dozen patents for various inventions in the mid-1950s. He founded a research group that was to create the first computer tools: hypertext links, the first interfaces, the mouse. For the anecdote, he confided years later to having baptized the mouse “mouse” because of its resemblance to the animal, the cable coming out of the small box having directly reminded him of a mouse tail. It is also he who will invent the “cursor”, which he will initially baptize “bug”.
It was not until 1968 and “the mother of all demos” that the mouse was introduced to the world. It is also at this time that other important innovations appear. Including e-mail and videoconferencing. The mouse abandons its wheels in favor of the first ball, which then has the size of a ping-pong ball.
The company founded by Englebart, however, does not realize the extent of its discovery. The concept is sold to Apple Computer for only $40,000.
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