Whether you're a reporter, a car mechanic, a student or a steel mill operator, the odds are pretty good that you're using a computer a lot. And you're probably telling that computer what to do using an X-Y position indicator for a display system.
Of course, we no longer call it an “X-Y position indicator for a display system” (left) but that's what its inventor, Doug Engelbart, called the computer mouse when he filed the patent on it in 1967. (Englebart and his lab guys did refer to it as a mouse but they also called it a 'bug' at one point, too.)
But though the patent was filed in 1967, the first-ever computer mouse was never shown to the public until December 9, 1968 — forty years ago this Tuesday — at what later became known as the “The Mother Of All Demos” at the convention centre in San Francisco.
It was called the Mother of All Demos because Engelbart not only showed off the mouse for the first time but he also demonstrated concepts which we now can't live without including: video conferencing, e-mail, and hypertext — text on a screen that, when clicked or acted upon by the user, leads to another screen of information or to some action by the computer.
Now: If you happen to be in northern California this week, there's a whole series of events which should appeal to any uber-geek to celebrate Engelbart's invention and that amazing 1968 presentation.
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