Mice

In the context of computing, a mouse (plural (generally): mice, also mouses) consists of a hand-held pointing device, designed to sit under one hand of the user and to detect movement relative to its two-dimensional supporting surface. more...

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In addition, it usually features buttons and/or other devices, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations. Extra buttons or features can add more control or dimensional input.

The mouse's 2D motion typically translates into the motion of a pointer on a display.

The name "mouse", coined at the Stanford Research Institute, derives from the resemblance of early models (which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device, suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common small rodent of the same name.

Because the computer mouse has long dominated the world of pointing devices in computing, people often refer to any generic computer pointing-device as a mouse.

Mice

Early mice

Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute invented the mouse in 1963 after extensive usability testing. Engelbart's team called it a "bug" — one of several experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). The other devices were designed to exploit other body movements — for example, head-mounted devices attached to the chin or nose — but ultimately the mouse won out because of its simplicity and convenience.

The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two gear-wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis. Engelbart received patent US3541541 on November 17, 1970 for an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System". At the time, Engelbart envisaged that users would hold the mouse continuously in one hand and type on a five-key chord keyset with the other.

Mechanical mice

Bill English invented the so-called ball mouse in the early 1970s while working for Xerox PARC. The ball-mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. 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 was 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 as needed.

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. A spin-off of EPFL, Logitech, launched the first popular breed of mice.

Read more at Wikipedia.org