A computer mouse with the most common standard features: two buttons and a scroll wheel, which can also act as a third button.

A mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features that can add more control or dimensional input. The mouse's motion typically translates into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows for fine control of a graphical user interface.

Naming[link]

The first known publication of the term mouse as a pointing device is in Bill English's 1965 publication "Computer-Aided Display Control".^[1]

The online Oxford Dictionaries entry for mouse states the plural for the small rodent is mice, while the plural for the small computer connected device is either mice or mouses. However, in the usage section of the entry it states that the more common plural is mice, and that the first recorded use of the term in the plural is mice as well (though it cites a 1984 use of mice when there were actually several earlier ones).^[2]

The term mice was seen in print in "The Computer as a Communication Device", written by J. C. R. Licklider in 1968.

The fourth edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language endorses both computer mice and computer mouses as correct plural forms for computer mouse. Some authors of technical documents may prefer either mouse devices or the more generic pointing devices. The plural mouses treats mouse as a "headless noun".

Early mice[link]

Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov. 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent 3,835,464. Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent 3,987,685

The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR project in 1952. It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project.^[3]

Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the first mouse prototype in 1963,^[4] with the assistance of his colleague Bill English. They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse.^[5] Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his patent ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.^[6]

The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect.^[7]

Several other experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS) exploited different 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 wheels perpendicular to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis. Engelbart received patent US3,541,541 on November 17, 1970 for an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System".^[8] 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.^[9] The concept was preceded in the 19th century by the telautograph, which also anticipated the fax machine.

A Smaky mouse, as invented at the EPFL by Jean-Daniel Nicoud and André Guignard

Just a few weeks before Engelbart released his demo in 1968, a mouse had already been developed and published by the German company Telefunken. Unlike Engelbart's mouse, the Telefunken model had a ball, as it can be seen in most later models until today. Since 1970, it was shipped as part and sold together with Telefunken Computers. Some models from the year 1972 are still well preserved.^[10]

The second marketed integrated mouse shipped as a part of a computer and intended for personal computer navigation came with the Xerox 8010 Star Information System in 1981. However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the 1984 appearance of the Apple Macintosh, which included an updated version of the original Lisa Mouse. In 1984 PC columnist John C. Dvorak stated the mouse as a reason the Macintosh would fail.^[11]

Variants[link]

Mechanical mice[link]

German company Telefunken published on their early ball mouse, called "Rollkugel" (German for "rolling ball"), on 2 October 1968.^[12] Telefunken's mouse was then sold commercially as optional equipment for their TR-440 computer, which was first marketed in 1968. Telefunken did not apply for a patent on their device.

Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse,^[13] created a ball mouse in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC.^[14]

The ball mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. It came as part of the hardware package of the Xerox Alto computer. 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 became 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 when required.

Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed. The scroll wheel is grey, to the right of the ball.

The ball mouse has two freely rotating rollers. They are located 90 degrees apart. One roller detects the forward–backward motion of the mouse and other the left–right motion. Opposite the two rollers is a third one (white, in the photo, at 45 degrees) that is spring-loaded to push the ball against the other two rollers. Each roller is on the same shaft as an encoder wheel that has slotted edges; the slots interrupt infrared light beams to generate electrical pulses that represent wheel movement. Each wheel's disc, however, has a pair of light beams, located so that a given beam becomes interrupted, or again starts to pass light freely, when the other beam of the pair is about halfway between changes. Simple logic circuits interpret the relative timing to indicate which direction the wheel is rotating. This scheme is sometimes called quadrature encoding of the wheel rotation, as the two optical sensor produce signals that are in approximately quadrature phase. The mouse sends these signals to the computer system via the mouse cable, directly as logic signals in very old mice such as the Xerox mice, and via a data-formatting IC in modern mice. The driver software in the system converts the signals into motion of the mouse cursor along X and Y axes on the computer screen.

The ball is mostly steel, with a precision spherical rubber surface. The weight of the ball, given an appropriate working surface under the mouse, provides a reliable grip so the mouse's movement is transmitted accurately.

Hawley Mark II Mice from the Mouse House

Ball mice and wheel mice were manufactured for Xerox by Jack Hawley, doing business as The Mouse House in Berkeley, California, starting in 1975.^[15][16]

Based on another invention by Jack Hawley, proprietor of the Mouse House, Honeywell produced another type of mechanical mouse.^[17][18] Instead of a ball, it had two wheels rotating at off axes. Keytronic later produced a similar product.^[19]

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.^[20] This new design incorporated a single hard rubber mouseball and three buttons, and remained a common design until the mainstream adoption of the scroll-wheel mouse during the 1990s.^[21] In 1985, René Sommer added a microprocessor to Nicoud's and Guignard's design.^[22] Through this innovation, Sommer is credited with inventing a significant component of the mouse, which made it more "intelligent;"^[22] though optical mice from Mouse Systems had incorporated microprocessors by 1984.^[23]

Another type of mechanical mouse, the "analog mouse" (now generally regarded as obsolete), uses potentiometers rather than encoder wheels, and is typically designed to be plug compatible with an analog joystick. The "Color Mouse", originally marketed by Radio Shack for their Color Computer (but also usable on MS-DOS machines equipped with analog joystick ports, provided the software accepted joystick input) was the best-known example.

Optical and laser mice[link]

A wireless optical mouse on a mousepad

Optical mice make use of one or more light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and an imaging array of photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than internal moving parts as does a mechanical mouse. A laser mouse is an optical mouse that uses coherent (laser) light.

Inertial and gyroscopic mice[link]

Often called "air mice" since they do not require a surface to operate, inertial mice use a tuning fork or other accelerometer (US Patent 4787051) to detect rotary movement for every axis supported. The most common models (manufactured by Logitech and Gyration) work using 2 degrees of rotational freedom and are insensitive to spatial translation. The user requires only small wrist rotations to move the cursor, reducing user fatigue or "gorilla arm". Usually cordless, they often have a switch to deactivate the movement circuitry between use, allowing the user freedom of movement without affecting the cursor position. A patent for an inertial mouse claims that such mice consume less power than optically based mice, and offer increased sensitivity, reduced weight and increased ease-of-use.^[24] In combination with a wireless keyboard an inertial mouse can offer alternative ergonomic arrangements which do not require a flat work surface, potentially alleviating some types of repetitive motion injuries related to workstation posture.

3D mice[link]

Also known as bats,^[25] flying mice, or wands,^[26] these devices generally function through ultrasound and provide at least three degrees of freedom. Probably the best known example would be 3DConnexion/Logitech's SpaceMouse from the early 1990s.

In the late 1990s Kantek introduced the 3D RingMouse. This wireless mouse was worn on a ring around a finger, which enabled the thumb to access three buttons. The mouse was tracked in three dimensions by a base station.^[27] Despite a certain appeal, it was finally discontinued because it did not provide sufficient resolution.

A recent consumer 3D pointing device is the Wii Remote. While primarily a motion-sensing device (that is, it can determine its orientation and direction of movement), Wii Remote can also detect its spatial position by comparing the distance and position of the lights from the IR emitter using its integrated IR camera (since the nunchuk accessory lacks a camera, it can only tell its current heading and orientation). The obvious drawback to this approach is that it can only produce spatial coordinates while its camera can see the sensor bar.

A mouse-related controller called the SpaceBall^[28] has a ball placed above the work surface that can easily be gripped. With spring-loaded centering, it sends both translational as well as angular displacements on all six axes, in both directions for each.

In November 2010 a German Company called Axsotic introduced a new concept of 3D mouse called 3D Spheric Mouse. This new concept of a true six degree-of-freedom input device uses a ball to rotate in 3 axes without any limitations.^[29]

Tactile mice[link]

In 2000, Logitech introduced the "tactile mouse", which contained a small actuator that made the mouse vibrate. Such a mouse can augment user-interfaces with haptic feedback, such as giving feedback when crossing a window boundary. To surf by touch requires the user to be able to feel depth or hardness; this ability was realized with the first electrorheological tactile mice^[30] but never marketed.

Ergonomic mouse[link]

As the name suggests, this type of mouse is intended to provide optimum comfort and avoid injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis and other repetitive strain injuries. It is designed to fit natural hand position and movements, to reduce discomfort.^[31]

Connectivity and communication protocols[link]

A Microsoft wireless Arc mouse

To transmit their input, typical cabled mice use a thin electrical cord terminating in a standard connector, such as RS-232C, PS/2, ADB or USB. Cordless mice instead transmit data via infrared radiation (see IrDA) or radio (including Bluetooth), although many such cordless interfaces are themselves connected through the aforementioned wired serial buses.

While the electrical interface and the format of the data transmitted by commonly available mice is currently standardized on USB, in the past it varied between different manufacturers. A bus mouse used a dedicated interface card for connection to an IBM PC or compatible computer.

Mouse use in DOS applications became more common after the introduction of the Microsoft mouse, largely because Microsoft provided an open standard for communication between applications and mouse driver software. Thus, any application written to use the Microsoft standard could use a mouse with a Microsoft compatible driver (even if the mouse hardware itself was incompatible with Microsoft's). An interesting footnote is that the Microsoft driver standard communicates mouse movements in standard units called "mickeys",^[32] as does the Allegro library.^[33]

Serial interface and protocol[link]

Standard PC mice once used the RS-232C serial port via a D-subminiature connector, which provided power to run the mouse's circuits as well as data on mouse movements. The Mouse Systems Corporation version used a five-byte protocol and supported three buttons. The Microsoft version used a three-byte protocol and supported two buttons. Due to the incompatibility between the two protocols, some manufacturers sold serial mice with a mode switch: "PC" for MSC mode, "MS" for Microsoft mode.^[34]

PS/2 interface and protocol[link]

With the arrival of the IBM PS/2 personal-computer series in 1987, IBM introduced the eponymous PS/2 interface for mice and keyboards, which other manufacturers rapidly adopted. The most visible change was the use of a round 6-pin mini-DIN, in lieu of the former 5-pin connector. In default mode (called stream mode) a PS/2 mouse communicates motion, and the state of each button, by means of 3-byte packets.^[35] For any motion, button press or button release event, a PS/2 mouse sends, over a bi-directional serial port, a sequence of three bytes, with the following format:

Here, XS and YS represent the sign bits of the movement vectors, XV and YV indicate an overflow in the respective vector component, and LB, MB and RB indicate the status of the left, middle and right mouse buttons (1 = pressed). PS/2 mice also understand several commands for reset and self-test, switching between different operating modes, and changing the resolution of the reported motion vectors.

A Microsoft IntelliMouse relies on an extension of the PS/2 protocol: the ImPS/2 or IMPS/2 protocol (the abbreviation combines the concepts of "IntelliMouse" and "PS/2"). It initially operates in standard PS/2 format, for backwards compatibility. After the host sends a special command sequence, it switches to an extended format in which a fourth byte carries information about wheel movements. The IntelliMouse Explorer works analogously, with the difference that its 4-byte packets also allow for two additional buttons (for a total of five).^[36]

The Typhoon mouse uses 6-byte packets which can appear as a sequence of two standard 3-byte packets, such that an ordinary PS/2 driver can handle them.^[37]

Mouse vendors also use other extended formats, often without providing public documentation.

For 3-D (or 6-degree-of-freedom) input, vendors have made many extensions both to the hardware and to software. In the late 1990s Logitech created ultrasound based tracking which gave 3D input to a few millimetres accuracy, which worked well as an input device but failed as a profitable product. In 2008, Motion4U introduced its "OptiBurst" system using IR tracking for use as a Maya (graphics software) plugin.

Apple Desktop Bus[link]

Apple Macintosh Plus mice (left) Beige mouse (right) Platinum mouse 1986

In 1986 Apple first implemented the Apple Desktop Bus allowing the daisy-chaining together of up to 16 devices, including arbitrarily many mice and other devices on the same bus with no configuration whatsoever. Featuring only a single data pin, the bus used a purely polled approach to computer/mouse communications and survived as the standard on mainstream models (including a number of non-Apple workstations) until 1998 when iMac joined the industry-wide switch to using USB. Beginning with the "Bronze Keyboard" PowerBook G3 in May 1999, Apple dropped the external ADB port in favor of USB, but retained an internal ADB connection in the PowerBook G4 for communication with its built-in keyboard and trackpad until early 2005.

USB[link]

The industry-standard USB (Universal Serial Bus) protocol and its connector have become widely used for mice; it's currently among the most popular types.^[38]

Cordless or wireless[link]

A wireless mouse made for notebook computers

Cordless or wireless mice transmit data via infrared radiation (see IrDA) or radio (including Bluetooth). The receiver is connected to the computer through a serial or USB port, or can be built in (as is sometimes the case with Bluetooth). Some non-Bluetooth wireless mice use USB receivers, which can often be stored inside the mouse for safe transport while not in use.

Some mice use newer "nano" receivers, designed to be small enough to remain connected in a laptop or notebook computer during transport, while still being large enough to easily remove.^[39]

Atari standard joystick connectivity[link]

The Amiga and the Atari ST use an Atari standard DE-9 connector for mice, the same connector that is used for joysticks on the same computers and numerous 8-bit systems, such as the Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600. However, the signals used for mice are different from those used for joysticks. As a result, plugging a mouse into a joystick port causes the "joystick" to continuously move in some direction, even if the mouse stays still, whereas plugging a joystick into a mouse port causes the "mouse" to only be able to move a single pixel in each direction.

Operation[link]

A mouse typically controls the motion of a pointer in two dimensions in a graphical user interface (GUI). Clicking or hovering (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an area) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical interfaces) through small images called "icons" and other elements. For example, a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper notebook, and clicking while the cursor hovers this icon might cause a text editing program to open the file in a window. (See also point-and-click)

Users can also employ mice gesturally; meaning that a stylized motion of the mouse cursor itself, called a "gesture", can issue a command or map to a specific action. For example, in a drawing program, moving the mouse in a rapid "x" motion over a shape might delete the shape.

Gestural interfaces occur more rarely than plain pointing-and-clicking; and people often find them more difficult to use, because they require finer motor-control from the user. However, a few gestural conventions have become widespread, including the drag-and-drop gesture, in which:

1. The user presses the mouse button while the mouse cursor hovers over an interface object
2. The user moves the cursor to a different location while holding the button down
3. The user releases the mouse button

For example, a user might drag-and-drop a picture representing a file onto a picture of a trash can, thus instructing the system to delete the file.

Other uses of the mouse's input occur commonly in special application-domains. In interactive three-dimensional graphics, the mouse's motion often translates directly into changes in the virtual camera's orientation. For example, in the first-person shooter genre of games (see below), players usually employ the mouse to control the direction in which the virtual player's "head" faces: moving the mouse up will cause the player to look up, revealing the view above the player's head. A related function makes an image of an object rotate, so that all sides can be examined.

When mice have more than one button, software may assign different functions to each button. Often, the primary (leftmost in a right-handed configuration) button on the mouse will select items, and the secondary (rightmost in a right-handed) button will bring up a menu of alternative actions applicable to that item. For example, on platforms with more than one button, the Mozilla web browser will follow a link in response to a primary button click, will bring up a contextual menu of alternative actions for that link in response to a secondary-button click, and will often open the link in a new tab or window in response to a click with the tertiary (middle) mouse button.

Different ways of operating the mouse cause specific things to happen in the GUI:

• Click: pressing and releasing a button.
  • (left) Single-click: clicking the main button.
  • (left) Double-click: clicking the button two times in quick succession counts as a different gesture than two separate single clicks.
  • (left) Triple-click: clicking the button three times in quick succession.
  • Right-click: clicking the secondary button.
  • Middle-click: clicking the ternary button.
• Drag: pressing and holding a button, then moving the mouse without releasing. (Use the command "drag with the right mouse button" instead of just "drag" when you instruct a user to drag an object while holding the right mouse button down instead of the more commonly used left mouse button.)
• Button chording (a.k.a. Rocker navigation).
  • Combination of right-click then left-click.
  • Combination of left-click then right-click or keyboard letter.
  • Combination of left or right-click and the mouse wheel.
• Clicking while holding down a modifier key.
• Moving the pointer a long distance: When a practical limit of mouse movement is reached, one lifts up the mouse, brings it to the opposite edge of the working area while it's held above the surface, and then replaces it down onto the working surface. This is often not necessary, because acceleration software detects fast movement, and moves the pointer significantly faster in proportion than for slow mouse motion.

Standard semantic gestures include:

• Crossing-based goal
• Drag and drop
• Menu traversal
• Pointing
• Rollover
• Selection

Multiple-mouse systems[link]

Some systems allow two or more mice to be used at once as input devices. 16-bit era home computers such as the Amiga used this to allow computer games with two players interacting on the same computer. The same idea is sometimes used in collaborative software, e.g. to simulate a whiteboard that multiple users can draw on without passing a single mouse around.

Microsoft Windows, since Windows 98, has supported multiple simultaneous pointing devices. Because Windows only provides a single screen cursor, using more than one device at the same time generally results in seemingly random movements of the cursor. However, the advantage of this support lies not in simultaneous use, but in simultaneous availability for alternate use: for example, a laptop user editing a complex document might use a handheld mouse for drawing and manipulation of graphics, but when editing a section of text, use a built-in trackpad to allow movement of the cursor while keeping his hands on the keyboard. Windows' multiple-device support means that the second device is available for use without having to disconnect or disable the first.

DirectInput originally allowed access to multiple mice as separate devices, but Windows NT based systems could not make use of this. When Windows XP was introduced, it provided a feature called "Raw Input" that offers the ability to track multiple mice independently, allowing for programs that make use of separate mice. Though a program could, for example, draw multiple cursors if it was a fullscreen application, Windows still supports just one cursor and keyboard.

As of 2009, Linux distributions and other operating systems that use X.Org, such as OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, support unlimited numbers of cursors and keyboards through Multi-Pointer X.

There have also been propositions of having a single operator use two mice simultaneously as a more sophisticated means of controlling various graphics and multimedia applications.^[40]

Buttons[link]

Mouse buttons are microswitches which can be pressed ("clicked") to select or interact with an element of a graphical user interface.

The three-button scrollmouse has become the most commonly available design. As of 2007 (and roughly since the late 1990s), users most commonly employ the second button to invoke a contextual menu in the computer's software user interface, which contains options specifically tailored to the interface element over which the mouse cursor currently sits. By default, the primary mouse button sits located on the left-hand side of the mouse, for the benefit of right-handed users; left-handed users can usually reverse this configuration via software.

Mouse speed[link]

The computer industry often measures mouse sensitivity in terms of counts per inch (CPI), commonly expressed incorrectly as dots per inch (DPI) – the number of steps the mouse will report when it moves one inch. In early mice, this specification was called pulses per inch (ppi).^[15] If the default mouse-tracking condition involves moving the cursor by one screen-pixel or dot on-screen per reported step, then the CPI does equate to DPI: dots of cursor motion per inch of mouse motion. The CPI or DPI as reported by manufacturers depends on how they make the mouse; the higher the CPI, the faster the cursor moves with mouse movement. However, software can adjust the mouse sensitivity, making the cursor move faster or slower than its CPI. Current^[update] software can change the speed of the cursor dynamically, taking into account the mouse's absolute speed and the movement from the last stop-point. In most software^[specify] this setting is named "speed", referring to "cursor precision". However, some software^[specify] names this setting "acceleration", but this term is in fact incorrect. The mouse acceleration, in the majority of mouse software, refers to the setting allowing the user to modify the cursor acceleration: the change in speed of the cursor over time while the mouse movement is constant.

For simple software, when the mouse starts to move, the software will count the number of "counts" or "mickeys" received from the mouse and will move the cursor across the screen by that number of pixels (or multiplied by a rate factor, typically less than 1). The cursor will move slowly on the screen, having a good precision. When the movement of the mouse passes the value set for "threshold", the software will start to move the cursor more quickly, with a greater rate factor. Usually, the user can set the value of the second rate factor by changing the "acceleration" setting.

Operating systems sometimes apply acceleration, referred to as "ballistics", to the motion reported by the mouse. For example, versions of Windows prior to Windows XP doubled reported values above a configurable threshold, and then optionally doubled them again above a second configurable threshold. These doublings applied separately in the X and Y directions, resulting in very nonlinear response.^[41]

Mousepads[link]

Engelbart's original mouse did not require a mousepad;^[42] the mouse had two large wheels which could roll on virtually any surface. However, most subsequent mechanical mice starting with the steel roller ball mouse have required a mousepad for optimal performance.

The mousepad, the most common mouse accessory, appears most commonly in conjunction with mechanical mice, because to roll smoothly the ball requires more friction than common desk surfaces usually provide. So-called "hard mousepads" for gamers or optical/laser mice also exist.

Most optical and laser mice do not require a pad. Whether to use a hard or soft mousepad with an optical mouse is largely a matter of personal preference. One exception occurs when the desk surface creates problems for the optical or laser tracking, for example, a transparent or reflective surface.

In the marketplace[link]

Computer mice built between 1986 and 2007

Around 1981 Xerox included mice with its Xerox Star, based on the mouse used in the 1970s on the Alto computer at Xerox PARC. Sun Microsystems, Symbolics, Lisp Machines Inc., and Tektronix also shipped workstations with mice, starting in about 1981. Later, inspired by the Star, Apple Computer released the Apple Lisa, which also used a mouse. However, none of these products achieved large-scale success. Only with the release of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 did the mouse see widespread use.^[43]

The Macintosh design,^[44] commercially successful and technically influential, led many other vendors to begin producing mice or including them with their other computer products (by 1986, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Windows 1.0, GEOS for the Commodore 64, and the Apple IIGS).^[45] The widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces in the software of the 1980s and 1990s made mice all but indispensable for controlling computers.

In November 2008, Logitech built their billionth mouse.^[46]

Use in games[link]

Logitech G5 laser mouse designed for gaming

Mice often function as an interface for PC-based computer games and sometimes for video game consoles.

First-person shooters[link]

Due to the cursor-like nature of the crosshairs in first-person shooters (FPS), a combination of mouse and keyboard provides a popular way to play FPS games. Players use the X-axis of the mouse for looking (or turning) left and right, leaving the Y-axis for looking up and down. Many gamers prefer this primarily in FPS games over a gamepad or joypad because it provides a higher resolution for input, so they are able to make small, precise motions in the game more easily. The left button usually controls primary fire. If the game supports multiple fire modes, the right button often provides secondary fire from the selected weapon. Games with only a single fire mode will generally map secondary fire to ironsights. In older games, the right button may also provide bonus options for a particular weapon, such as allowing access to the scope of a sniper rifle or allowing the mounting of a bayonet or silencer.

Gamers can use a scroll wheel for changing weapons (or for controlling scope-zoom magnification, in older games). On most FPS games, programming may also assign more functions to additional buttons on mice with more than three controls. A keyboard usually controls movement (for example, WASD, for moving forward, left, backward and right, respectively) and other functions such as changing posture. Since the mouse serves for aiming, a mouse that tracks movement accurately and with less lag (latency) will give a player an advantage over players with less accurate or slower mice.

An early technique of players, circle strafing, saw a player continuously strafing while aiming and shooting at an opponent by walking in circle around the opponent with the opponent at the center of the circle. Players could achieve this by holding down a key for strafing while continuously aiming the mouse towards the opponent.

Games using mice for input are so popular that many manufacturers make mice specifically for gaming. Such mice may feature adjustable weights, high-resolution optical or laser components, additional buttons, ergonomic shape, and other features such as adjustable CPI.

Many games, such as first- or third-person shooters, have a setting named "invert mouse" or similar (not to be confused with "button inversion", sometimes performed by left-handed users) which allows the user to look downward by moving the mouse forward and upward by moving the mouse backward (the opposite of non-inverted movement). This control system resembles that of aircraft control sticks, where pulling back causes pitch up and pushing forward causes pitch down; computer joysticks also typically emulate this control-configuration.

After id Software's Doom, the game that popularized FPS games but which did not support vertical aiming with a mouse (the y-axis served for forward/backward movement), competitor 3D Realms' Duke Nukem 3D became one of the first games that supported using the mouse to aim up and down. This and other games using the Build engine had an option to invert the Y-axis. The "invert" feature actually made the mouse behave in a manner that users now^[update] regard as non-inverted (by default, moving mouse forward resulted in looking down). Soon after, id Software released Quake, which introduced the invert feature as users now^[update] know it. Other games using the Quake engine have come on the market following this standard, likely due to the overall popularity of Quake.

Home consoles[link]

In 1988 the educational video game system, the VTech Socrates, featured a wireless mouse with an attached mouse pad as an optional controller used for some games. In the early 1990s the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game system featured a mouse in addition to its controllers. The Mario Paint game in particular used the mouse's capabilities, as did its successor on the Nintendo 64. Sega released official mice for their Genesis/Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast consoles. NEC sold official mice for its PC Engine and PC-FX consoles. Sony Computer Entertainment released an official mouse product for the PlayStation console, and included one along with the Linux for PlayStation 2 kit. However, users can attach virtually any USB mouse to the PlayStation 2 console. In addition the PlayStation 3 also fully supports USB mice. Recently the Wii also has this latest development added on in a recent software update.

See also[link]

Electronics portal

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Computer mouse

Douglas Carl Engelbart ("Doug")
Douglas Engelbart in 2008
Born	(1925-01-30) January 30, 1925 (age 87) Portland, Oregon, USA
Citizenship	US
Nationality	US
Fields	Inventor
Institutions	Stanford Research Institute, Tymshare, McDonnell Douglas, Bootstrap Institute/Alliance, Doug Engelbart Institute
Alma mater	Oregon State College (BS); UC Berkeley (PhD)
Doctoral advisor	John R. Woodyard
Known for	Computer mouse, Hypertext, Groupware, Interactive Computing
Notable awards	National Medal of Technology, Lemelson-MIT Prize, Turing Award, Lovelace Medal, Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, Fellow Award, Computer History Museum
Website
dougengelbart.org

Douglas Carl Engelbart (born January 30, 1925) is an American inventor, and an early computer and internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human-computer interaction, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse,^[1] and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs. He is a committed, vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world’s increasingly urgent and complex problems.^[2]

Engelbart embedded a set of organizing principles in his lab, which he termed "bootstrapping strategy". He designed the strategy to accelerate the rate of innovation of his lab.^[3]

Early life and education[link]

Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon on January 30, 1925 to Carl Louis Engelbart and Gladys Charlotte Amelia Munson Engelbart. He is of German, Swedish and Norwegian descent.^[4]

He was the middle of three children, with a sister Dorianne (3 years older), and a brother David (14 months younger). They lived in Portland in his early years, and moved to the countryside to Johnson Creek when he was 9 or 10, after the death of his father. He graduated from Portland's Franklin High School in 1942.

Midway through his college studies at Oregon State University (then called Oregon State College), near the end of World War II, he was drafted into the US Navy, serving two years as a radar technician in the Philippines. On a small island, in a tiny hut on stilts, he first read Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think", which greatly inspired him.

He returned to Oregon State and completed his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1948.

While at Oregon State, he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon social fraternity.^{[citation needed]} He was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the Ames Research Center, where he worked through 1951.^[5]

Career and accomplishments[link]

The first prototype of a computer mouse, as designed by Bill English from Engelbart's sketches^[6]

Epiphany[link]

Doug Engelbart's career was inspired in 1951 when he got engaged and suddenly realized he had no career goals beyond getting a good education and a decent job. Over several months he reasoned that:

1. he would focus his career on making the world a better place;
2. any serious effort to make the world better requires some kind of organized effort;
3. harnessing the collective human intellect of all the people contributing to effective solutions was the key;
4. if you could dramatically improve how we do that, you'd be boosting every effort on the planet to solve important problems—the sooner the better; and
5. computers could be the vehicle for dramatically improving this capability.^{[citation needed]}

In 1945, Engelbart had read with interest Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think",^[7] a call to arms for making knowledge widely available as a national peacetime grand challenge. Doug had also read something about computers (a relatively recent phenomenon), and from his experience as a radar technician he knew that information could be analyzed and displayed on a screen. He envisioned intellectual workers sitting at display "working stations", flying through information space, harnessing their collective intellectual capacity to solve important problems together in much more powerful ways. Harnessing collective intellect, facilitated by interactive computers, became his life's mission at a time when computers were viewed as number crunching tools.

He enrolled in graduate school in electrical engineering at University of California, Berkeley, graduating with an Master of Science degree in 1953, and a Ph.D. in 1955.^[5] As a graduate student at Berkeley he assisted in the construction of the California Digital Computer project CALDIC. His graduate work led to several patents.^[8] After completing his PhD he stayed on at Berkeley as assistant professor to teach for a year, and left when it was clear he could not pursue his vision there. He then formed a startup, Digital Techniques, to commercialize some of his doctorate research on storage devices, but after a year decided instead to pursue the research he had been dreaming of since 1951. He took a position at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, in 1957. He initially worked for Hewitt Crane on magnetic devices and miniaturization of electronics; Engelbart and Crane became lifelong friends.

SRI and ARC[link]

At SRI, Engelbart gradually obtained over a dozen patents (some resulting from his graduate work), and by 1962 produced a report about his vision and proposed research agenda titled Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.^[9] This led to funding from ARPA to launch his work. Engelbart recruited a research team in his new Augmentation Research Center (ARC, the lab he founded at SRI), and became the driving force behind the design and development of the On-Line System, or NLS. He and his team developed computer-interface elements such as bit-mapped screens, the mouse, hypertext, collaborative tools, and precursors to the graphical user interface. He conceived and developed many of his user interface ideas back in the mid-1960s, long before the personal computer revolution, at a time when most individuals were kept away from computers, and could only use computers through intermediaries (see batch processing), and when software tended to be written for vertical applications in proprietary systems.

Two Apple Macintosh Plus mice, 1986

Engelbart applied for a patent in 1967 and received it in 1970, for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse - U.S. Patent 3,541,541), which he had developed with Bill English, his lead engineer, a few years earlier. In the patent application it is described as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". Engelbart later revealed that it was nicknamed the "mouse" because the tail came out the end. His group also called the on-screen cursor a "bug", but this term was not widely adopted.

He never received any royalties for his mouse invention. During an interview, he says "SRI patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

Engelbart showcased the chorded keyboard and many more of his and ARC's inventions in 1968 at the so-called mother of all demos.^[10]

ARPANET[link]

Engelbart's research was funded by ARPA, SRI's ARC became involved with the ARPANET (the precursor of the Internet).

The first message on the ARPANET was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m, on October 29, 1969 from Boelter Hall 3420.^[11] Supervised by Leonard Kleinrock, Kline transmitted from the university's SDS Sigma 7 Host computer to the Stanford Research Institute's SDS 940 Host computer. The message text was the word "login"; the "l" and the "o" letters were transmitted, but the system then crashed. Hence, the literal first message over the ARPANET was "lo". About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer effected a full "login". The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was established.^[12]

In addition to SRI and UCLA, UCSB, and the University of Utah were part of the original four network nodes. By December 5, 1969, the entire 4-node network was connected.

ARC soon became the first Network Information Center and thus managed the directory for connections among all ARPANET nodes. ARC also published a large percentage of the early Request For Comments, an ongoing series of publications that document the evolution of ARPANET into the Internet. Although the NIC at first used NLS, it was intended to be a production service to other network users, while Engelbart continued to focus on innovative research. This inherent conflict led to establishing the NIC as its own group, led by Elizabeth J. Feinler.^[13]

Anecdotal notes[link]

Historian of science Thierry Bardini argues that Engelbart's complex personal philosophy (which drove all his research) foreshadowed the modern application of the concept of coevolution to the philosophy and use of technology.^[14]

Bardini points out that Engelbart was strongly influenced by the principle of linguistic relativity developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf. Where Whorf reasoned that the sophistication of a language controls the sophistication of the thoughts that can be expressed by a speaker of that language, Engelbart reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies. He thus set himself to the revolutionary task of developing computer-based technologies for manipulating information directly, and also to improve individual and group processes for knowledge-work.^[14]

End of research career[link]

Engelbart slipped into relative obscurity after 1976. Several of Engelbart's researchers became alienated from him and left his organization for Xerox PARC, in part due to frustration, and in part due to differing views of the future of computing. Engelbart saw the future in collaborative, networked, timeshare (client-server) computers, which younger programmers rejected in favor of the personal computer. The conflict was both technical and social: the younger programmers came from an era where centralized power was highly suspect, and personal computing was just barely on the horizon.

Engelbart served on the board of directors of Erhard Seminars Training (EST). Several key ARC personnel were also involved. Although EST had been recommended by other researchers, the controversial nature of EST and other social experiments reduced the morale and social cohesion of the ARC community.^[14]

The Mansfield Amendment, the end of the Vietnam War, and the end of the Apollo program reduced ARC's funding from ARPA and NASA. SRI's management, which disapproved of Engelbart's approach to running the center, placed the remains of ARC under the control of artificial intelligence researcher Bertram Raphael, who negotiated the transfer of the laboratory to a company called Tymshare. Engelbart's house in Atherton, California burned down during this period, causing him and his family even further problems. Tymshare took over NLS and the lab that Engelbart had founded, hired most of the lab's staff including its creator as a Senior Scientist, renamed the software Augment, and offered it as a commercial service via its new Office Automation Division. Tymshare was already somewhat familiar with NLS; back when ARC was still operational, it had experimented with its own local copy of the NLS software on a minicomputer called OFFICE-1, as part of a joint project with ARC.

At Tymshare, Engelbart soon found himself marginalized and relegated to obscurity. Operational concerns at Tymshare overrode Engelbart's desire to do further research. Various executives, first at Tymshare and later at McDonnell Douglas (which took over Tymshare in 1984), expressed interest in his ideas, but never committed the funds or the people to further develop them. His interest inside of McDonnell Douglas was focused on the enormous knowledge management and IT requirements involved in the lifecycle of an aerospace program, which served to strengthen Doug's resolve to motivate the IT arena toward global interoperability and an open hyperdocument system.^[15] Engelbart retired from McDonnell Douglas in 1986, determined pursue his work free from commercial pressure.

Teaming with his daughter, Christina Engelbart, in 1988 he founded the Bootstrap Institute to coalesce his ideas into a series of three-day and half-day management seminars offered at Stanford University 1989–2000. By the early 1990s there was sufficient interest among his seminar graduates to launch a collaborative implementation of his work, and the Bootstrap Alliance was formed as a non-profit home base for this effort. Although the invasion of Iraq and subsequent recession spawned a rash of belt-tightening reorganizations which drastically redirected the efforts of their alliance partners, they continued with the management seminars, consulting, and small-scale collaborations. In the mid-1990s they were awarded some DARPA funding to develop a modern user interface to Augment, called Visual AugTerm (VAT), while participating in a larger program addressing the IT requirements of the Joint Task Force.

Honors[link]

Since the late 1980s, prominent individuals and organizations have recognized the seminal importance of Engelbart's contributions:^[16]

In December 1995, at the Fourth WWW Conference in Boston, he was the first recipient of what would later become the Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award. In 1997 he was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize of $500,000, the world's largest single prize for invention and innovation, and the ACM Turing Award. To mark the 30th anniversary of Engelbart's 1968 demo, in 1998 the Stanford Silicon Valley Archives [1] and the Institute for the Future hosted Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution[2], a symposium at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, to honor Engelbart and his ideas. Also that year, ACM SIGCHI awarded him the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award (and inducted him into the CHI Academy in 2002).

Engelbart was awarded The Franklin Institute's Certificate of Merit in 1996 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1999 in Computer and Cognitive Science.

In early 2000 Engelbart produced, with volunteers and sponsors, what was called The Unfinished Revolution – II[3], also known as the Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford University, to document and publicize his work and ideas to a larger audience (live, and online).^[17][18]

In December 2000, US President Bill Clinton awarded Engelbart the National Medal of Technology, the United States' highest technology award.^[19] In 2001 he was awarded a British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, and in 2005 he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum and honored with the Norbert Wiener Award, which is given annually by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

Robert X. Cringely did an hour long interview with Engelbart on December 9, 2005 in his NerdTV [4] video podcast series. On December 9, 2008, Engelbart was honored at the 40th Anniversary celebration of the 1968 "Mother of All Demos".^[20] This event, produced by SRI International, was held at Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University. Speakers included several members of Engelbart's original Augmentation Research Center (ARC) team including Don Andrews, Bill Paxton, Bill English, and Jeff Rulifson, Engelbart's chief government sponsor Bob Taylor, and other pioneers of interactive computing, including Andy van Dam and Alan Kay. In addition, Christina Engelbart spoke about her father's early influences and the ongoing work of the Doug Engelbart Institute.^[21] In June 2009, the New Media Consortium recognized Engelbart as an NMC Fellow ^[22] for his lifetime of achievements. In 2011, Engelbart was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame.^[23][24]

Recent work and legacy[link]

Doug Engelbart attended Program for the Future 2010 Conference^[25] where hundreds of people convened at The Tech Museum in San Jose and online to engage in dialog about how to pursue Doug Engelbart's vision to augment collective intelligence.

The most complete coverage of Engelbart's bootstrapping ideas can be found in Boosting Our Collective IQ,^[26] by Douglas C. Engelbart, 1995. This is a special keepsake including three of Engelbart's key papers, artfully edited and produced into book form by Yuri Rubinsky and Christina Engelbart to commemorate the presentation of the 1995 SoftQuad Web Award to Doug Engelbart at the World Wide Web conference in Boston that December, honoring his early and seminal contribution to the hypertext systems. Only 2,000 softcover copies were printed, and 100 hardcover, numbered and signed by Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. 30 pages, 5.5″×9″ includes Epilogue and details of the Award. Engelbart's book is now being republished by the Doug Engelbart Institute.^[27]

Two comprehensive histories of Engelbart's laboratory and work are in What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff and A Heritage of Innovation: SRI's First Half Century[5] by Donald Neilson. Other books on Engelbart and his laboratory include Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini and The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart, by Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg in conversation with Douglas Engelbart.^[28] All four of these books are based on interviews with Engelbart as well as other contributors in his laboratory.

Engelbart is now Founder Emeritus of the Doug Engelbart Institute, which he founded in 1988 with his daughter Christina Engelbart, who is now Executive Director. The Institute promotes Engelbart's philosophy for boosting Collective IQ—the concept of dramatically improving how we can solve important problems together—using a strategic bootstrapping approach for accelerating our progress toward that goal.^[29]

In 2005 Engelbart received a National Science Foundation grant to fund the open source HyperScope [6] project. The Hyperscope team built a browser component using Ajax and DHTML designed to replicate Augment's multiple viewing and jumping capabilities (linking within and across various documents). HyperScope is perceived as the first step of a process designed to engage a wider community in a dialogue, on development of collaborative software and services, based on Engelbart's goals and research. The Doug Engelbart Institute is now based at SRI International.

Engelbart has served on the Advisory Boards of the University of Santa Clara Center for Science, Technology, and Society [7], Foresight Institute,^[19] Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, The Technology Center of Silicon Valley, and The Hyperwords Company Ltd (producer of the Firefox Add-On called Hyperwords.^[30]

Family[link]

Engelbart has four children, Gerda, Diana, Christina and Norman with his first wife of 47 years, Ballard who died in 1997. He has nine grandchildren. He remarried on January 26, 2008 to writer and producer Karen O'Leary Engelbart.^[31][32] An 85th birthday celebration was held at the Tech Museum of Innovation.^[33]

See also[link]

• Dynamic Knowledge Repository
• Collective intelligence

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Bardini, Thierry (2000). Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3723-1. 
• Landau, Valerie; Clegg, Eileen (2009). The Engelbart Hypothesis: Dialogs with Douglas Engelbart. Berkeley: Next Press. http://engelbartbook.com. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Douglas Engelbart

External audio
Audio
	"Collective IQ and Human Augmentation", Interview with Douglas Engelbart
Videos
	Doug Engelbart featured on JCN Profiles, Archive.org

• Doug Engelbart's official website and home of the Doug Engelbart Institute (formerly Bootstrap)
• Engelbart course facilitated by Valerie Landau at CSU Monterey Bay
• U.C. Berkeley Lecture in IEOR 190C Feb. 2008
• Douglas C. Engelbart Papers, 1953-2005(call number M0638; 464 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries
• Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution; December 1998 at Stanford University
• Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing – December 9, 2008 – 40th anniversary commemorative event
• The History of Doug Engelbart and Interactive Computing
• As We May Work – the Pursuit of Collective IQ, from IBM Symposium site
• Wired article: The Click Heard Round The World
• Transcript of 2003 visit to San Jose State University
• Doug Engelbart: Father of the Mouse
• Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo Original 90-minute video from MouseSite
• OpenAugment Consortium, dedicated to the preservation of the Augment system
• SRI mouse
• Doug Engelbart Video Archives, Archive.org