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The Mouse That Started It All: A Wooden Wonder

The Mouse That Started It All: A Wooden Wonder

The very first computer mouse wasn't a sleek plastic device but a bulky, hand-carved wooden block with a single button, patented in 1970.

This revolutionary pointing device was invented by Douglas Engelbart and Bill English at the Stanford Research Institute in the mid-1960s. Their original prototype, unveiled at Engelbart's legendary "Mother of All Demos" in 1968, used two perpendicular wheels that rolled along the desktop to track movement. Surprisingly, the name "mouse" was simply a casual term coined by the inventors because the cord trailing from the device resembled a tail, and it stuck. Despite its humble wooden beginnings, this innovation laid the groundwork for how we interact with computers today.
🔗 Douglas C. Engelbart, The Mother of All Demos (1968)🔗 Computer mouse

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