THE MOUSE

The mouse has been since its first appearance a vital part of the pc, in these days we can’t imagine a

desktop pc without a mouse but very few people knows how or when this appears.

1952: Born the first trackball, invented by the Canadian NAVY

1963: The first mouse prototype appears, invented by Douglas Engelbart: Consisted of a wooden

shell, circuit board and two metal wheels that came into contact with the surface it was being used on.

1970: The mouse appears on the market: “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System” worked

with two gears that recorded horizontal and vertical cursor positions.

A few weeks after submitting Engelbart, the German company Telefunken launched a mouse model

that had a small rubber ball inside, responsible for recording the coordinates. Although the device was

part of the computer components brand, that was regarded as the first commercially available mouse

history.

1973 – 1981: The Xerox mouse: The following mouses that won the market were sold with Xerox

personal computers, such as Alto, 1973, the first computer to use as desktop which had a usage-based

"mouse”.

1983: The first apple mouse: In 1983, Apple launched the famous Lisa computer, which included a

mouse. A salient feature of this model is that instead of using a rubber ball, mouse Lisa wore a metal

sphere. This was the model that set the standard of a single button mouses for all of the company for

nearly 20 years.

1999: Optical mouse is released: Although research in 1980 this technology was in 1999 that came

the first commercial model of this type. The IntelliMouse with IntelliEye of Microsoft, worked on

almost any surface and showed significant improvements compared with the mechanical mouse.

The main difference was that the "ball" of the mechanical mouse was replaced by an infrared LED,

with the advantage that this model did not accumulate dirt, preventing the user having to open the

device for cleaning. The IntelliMouse series was the first to incorporate the scroll Wheel

Later, these models have continued to evolve and the LED was replaced by a laser, invading the

market in 2004.

The evolution of mouses does not end there, now incorporated mouses gyroscopes, allowing it

unnecessary to use on a flat surface physic. These types of models require only some small

movements to move the cursor, thereby reducing physical fatigue caused by dragging the mouse all

day.

Another innovation are called 3D mouses, specially developed for editing and navigation of images in

three dimensions , but are not limited to such use.

Also emerged new models to which they can add their effects generated sensations, such as vibrate

cause the device to be the cursor over a graphical element.

It is necessary to mention a device like the Kinect, Xbox 360, which can guide the development of

future mouses, wherein it is not necessary to take any element by hand to move the cursor.

As we can see, may be the mouse is condemned to disappear but only as a external device all the

functions and apps for this device keep appearing in many ways.

SOURCES

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/613/The-History-of-the-Computer-Mouse/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing)#History

JERSON JESUS REYES MUÑOZ

INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL MEDIA