On December 9, 1968, Douglas Engelbart, the director of Stanford Research Institute's (SRI) Augmentation Research Center, took the stage and gave what has since become known as "the mother of all demos." A number of ideas in use today were first demonstrated that day, including including hypertext , object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as video conferencing. But the idea that people most held onto, was the mouse.
Billions of mice have been shipped since then, but it took years for the mouse to catch on. In 1984 Apple bought the mouse patent for its Macintosh; Engelbart never saw a penny from mouse sales.
The very first mouse (not used in the demo) was built in 1964 by Bill English of SRI. It consisted of a small pine box equipped with a red clicker button on top. No laser, LED or even ball was used to track movement; two wheels at right angles underneath tracked horizontal and vertical motion.
As to why Engelbart called the now ubiquitous pointing device a mouse, I quote from the demo:
I don't know why we call it a mouse. Sometimes I apologize. It started that way, and it never did change.
The event will be celebrated today at Stanford University in an afternoon program titled "Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing: SRI's Revolutionary 1968 Demo." Attendees will include Engelbart, now 83, and many others who worked with him.
Watch a section of the demo focusing on the mouse, attached to this article.
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