December 9, 1968 was a momentous date in the history of computers and technology. On that date in San Francisco, computer pioneer Douglas Englebart gave what we now call the “Mother of all Demos” at the Fall Joint Computer conference. Englebart had labored for over 12 years on a vision of a new way of computing. The culmination was this unique demonstration. In a short 90 minutes the world of computing was turned on its head and would never be the same.
Englebart’s group, the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford was interested in making computers more widely used. The group felt that punch cards and keyboarding would never be used by the mass of business people. In the demonstration, Enblebart introduced to the world: hypertext, networking, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration. The highlight of the demo was the introduction of the computer mouse as a unique input device for the common business person. The mouse had been invented by Englebart earlier that year after many attempts to simplify human input to the computer. He wanted to create a device that anybody could use to control a computer more naturally than a keyboard. Made of wood with two wheels to determine X-Y motion, the first mouse looks quite boxy.
Englebart’s group, the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford was interested in making computers more widely used. The group felt that punch cards and keyboarding would never be used by the mass of business people. In the demonstration, Enblebart introduced to the world: hypertext, networking, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration. The highlight of the demo was the introduction of the computer mouse as a unique input device for the common business person. The mouse had been invented by Englebart earlier that year after many attempts to simplify human input to the computer. He wanted to create a device that anybody could use to control a computer more naturally than a keyboard. Made of wood with two wheels to determine X-Y motion, the first mouse looks quite boxy.
The patent for the mouse was awarded to Englebart in 1970, but was not fully adapted until the 1980s. Englebart never received a penny in royalties, since his patent expired in 1987, well before the mouse became the input device of choice. The first mouse used in a commercial system was the XEROX Star introduced in 1981. The Star also had the first graphical user interface (GUI) operating system. The founders of Apple loved the Star and introduced their version as the Apple Lisa in 1983. Although the Lisa was a commercial failure, Apple never gave up the hope of GUI and mouse input. The Apple Macintosh was the very successful result. Microsoft came up the “me too” Windows system in November 1985.
The development of the mouse using a ball and “chopper wheels” came in 1971. The “chopper wheels” chopped light beams as they turned and translated those chops into X-Y movement. Various attempts at getting rid of the ball were made in the 1980s. Optical mice that used a grid surface mouse pad and LEDs were made by several manufacturers. The Laser optical mouse we use today was developed by Sun Microsystems in 1998. Along with the laser came the cutting of the wire and wireless optical mouse, today’s ultimate mighty mouse!
No comments:
Post a Comment