[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Dave Horsfall]

Blimey, but I nearly missed this one (I was sick in bed).

On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced 
something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm 
struggling to find more information about it; wasn't there a photo of a 
big boxy device?

-- 
Dave Horsfall BSc DTM (VK2KFU) -- FuglySoft -- Gosford IT -- Unix/C/Perl (AbW)
People who fail to / understand security / surely will suffer. (tks: RichardM)

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Hellwig Geisse]

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On Fr, 2018-04-27 at 19:57 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 
> On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced 
> something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm 
> struggling to find more information about it; wasn't there a photo of a 
> big boxy device?
> 

This seems to be a date which is much too late. Even Smalltalk-72
on the Alto used a pointing device. In his book "Smalltalk-80:
Bits of History, Words of Advice" Glenn Krasner wrote:
"Smalltalk-72 was ported to the Alto [...] Soon many interesting
and useful applications were written, including a mouse-driven
program editor [...]"

Hellwig

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[William Corcoran]

Absolutely Hellwig.  Please take a look at the early DARPA/Internet RFCs from ~1969 and they make reference to a mouse.    I will try to dig it up.  

BIll Corcoran

> On Apr 27, 2018, at 6:38 AM, Hellwig Geisse <hellwig.geisse at mni.thm.de> wrote:
> 
>> On Fr, 2018-04-27 at 19:57 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> 
>> On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced 
>> something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm 
>> struggling to find more information about it; wasn't there a photo of a 
>> big boxy device?
>> 
> 
> This seems to be a date which is much too late. Even Smalltalk-72
> on the Alto used a pointing device. In his book "Smalltalk-80:
> Bits of History, Words of Advice" Glenn Krasner wrote:
> "Smalltalk-72 was ported to the Alto [...] Soon many interesting
> and useful applications were written, including a mouse-driven
> program editor [...]"
> 
> Hellwig

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2018-Apr-27 19:57:51 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced

Well, the company was Xerox.  PARC was their research facility.

>something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm 

Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the mouse in his "Mother of All Demos" on
1968-Dec-09 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY).  According
to WP, he applied for the patent in 1967 so I'm not sure when he invented it.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Bakul Shah]

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>> On Apr 27, 2018, at 4:13 AM, Peter Jeremy <peter at rulingia.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On 2018-Apr-27 19:57:51 +1000, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>> On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced
> 
> Well, the company was Xerox.  PARC was their research facility.
> 
>> something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm
> 
> Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the mouse in his "Mother of All Demos" on
> 1968-Dec-09 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY).  According
> to WP, he applied for the patent in 1967 so I'm not sure when he invented it.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Jeremy

According to 
https://www.macworld.com/article/1137400/input-devices/mouse40.html

Bill English designed the first mouse in 1963 based on Engelbart’s sketches.

By 1982 we had access to a Mouse Systems’ mouse. I played with it but gave
up as it was no fun using it with a character only 80x25 screen.
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[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
 |Blimey, but I nearly missed this one (I was sick in bed).
 |
 |On this day in 1981, some little company called Xerox PARC introduced 
 |something called a "mouse" (mostly because it has a tail), but I'm 
 |struggling to find more information about it; wasn't there a photo of a 
 |big boxy device?

http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/28358/1/cernbooks2_12-00

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Ronald Natalie]

Interesting Typography on the demo film.   Never seen capital letters identified with overscores.

PARC is well known for contributing things to the public that Xerox never quite got into a real product.   I always loved going to meetings there just to see what they had come up with this time.

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Paul Winalski]

On 4/27/18, Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
> PARC is well known for contributing things to the public that Xerox never
> quite got into a real product.   I always loved going to meetings there just
> to see what they had come up with this time.

For a while Gordon Bell used to hand out the Xerox PARC Award to the
R&D project that simultaneously did the most to advance the state of
the art and contributed the least to DEC's bottom line.

-Paul W.

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Cág]

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No offence, but anything that makes me move my fingers from my keyboard,
be it a mouse, a touchpad etc., takes a menacing look from me.

--
caóc

[TUHS] Happy birthday, computer mouse!

[Dave Horsfall]

Sorry, folks; thanks for all the feedback (ouch!) and I'll check my 
references better next time (along with my medications, as I have a 
suspect pros gl.)

-- 
Dave Horsfall BSc DTM (VK2KFU) -- FuglySoft -- Gosford IT -- Unix/C/Perl (AbW)
People who fail to / understand security / surely will suffer. (tks: RichardM)