The mouse turns forty this week. That may surprise most people but the invention of the mouse actually pre-dates the big Apple IIe years and the legendary battles for marketshare among Apple, Microsoft and IBM. SFGate.com describes the demonstration where inventor Douglas Engelbart debuted his mouse device in 1968 to an amazed crowd of 1,000 people.
The Dec. 9, 1968, unveiling of the primitive device with a mouse and interactive screen - in a now-legendary demonstration by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute - drew a rousing, standing ovation from the computing cognoscenti who recognized the significance of what they had just seen.
The machine raised hopes of solving a major modern quandary - how to navigate the world's rapidly accumulating and increasingly complex store of information. That year's fledgling efforts to navigate the physical universe in spaceships seemed ponderous and slow compared to the prospect of speeding through the universe of information in the digital ships promised by the new computers.
The invention featured rudimentary windows and hyperlinks that allowed jumping from one document to another, as well as the ability to edit text and add graphics on a video monitor. The presentation also offered a peek at future computer networks that would become the Internet.
"No one has ever before or since seen such a collection of great ideas in one demonstration," said SRI President and CEO Curt Carlson.
The Times Online has an article with some ideas that may replace the mouse in the near future. They include touch screens and voice technology which we are beginning to see more and more of already. Other ideas include motion detector technology - like Tom Cruise used in Minority Report - and mind control.
The mouse turns forty this week. That may surprise most people but the invention of the mouse actually pre-dates the big Apple IIe years and the legendary battles for marketshare among Apple, Microsoft and IBM. SFGate.com 
