Doug Engelbart invented the computer mouse in the early 1960s in his research lab at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). The first prototype – a one-button mouse in a wooden shell on wheels – was built in 1964 to test the concept.
1a
Based on results of his landmark study on 'Augmenting the Human Intellect,' Engelbart had received modest funding to evaluate the speed and efficiency of various devices for pointing on a display screen, like the joy stick, including a few his team rigged up and threw into the mix, like the one they called a "mouse." Which pointing device scored the highest? How was it built and tested? What inspired all this anyway? Read on! And don't miss Check it Out below for original footage, photos, timelines, documents, fun facts, and more.
1b
A patent application for the mouse was filed in 1967, and US Patent 3,541,541 was awarded in 1970 under the descriptive title "X-Y position indicator for a display system."
1c
Although many impressive innovations for interacting with computers have followed in the last 50 years since its invention, the mouse remains to this day the most efficient hands on pointing device available for speed and accuracy.
11dc
The basic idea for the mouse first came to him in 1961 while sitting in a conference session on computer graphics, his mind mulling over the challenge of making interactive computing more efficient. It occurred to him that, using a pair of small wheels traversing a tabletop, one wheel turning horizontally, one turning vertically, the computer could track their combined rotations and move the cursor on the display accordingly. The wheels could function something like the wheels on a planimeter – a tool used by engineers and geographers to measure areas on a map, blueprint, drawing, etc. – but in this case, rolling the wheels around on the tabletop would plot the x,y coordinates for a cursor on a computer screen. He recorded the idea in his notebook for future reference.
Since 1951 Doug had envisioned intellectual workers sitting at high-performance interactive display workstations, accessing a vast online information space in which to collaborate on important problems. When pondering the question of pointing devices in 1961, he was in the midst of an in-depth study of how teams and organizations might become much more effective in solving important problems. In 1962 he published his findings in "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," which in 1963 garnered him some modest funding from ARPA to begin to hire a very small research team, and set up a basic lab with computer resources, teletypes, and finally, a display workstation.
By now there were several off-the-shelf solutions for moving a cursor and selecting something on a display screen, but no good data about which would be most efficient to meet Engelbart's "high-performance" requirement. He applied for and was awarded a small grant from NASA to explore that question.
Doug and team rounded up then best-of-breed pointing devices to evaluate, and rigged up some in-house devices to add to the mix as well, such as a knee-operated device (see Mouse Alternatives below). He also reviewed his earlier notes with lead engineer
Bill English, who built a prototype of the hand-held device with perpendicular wheels mounted in a carved out wooden block, with a button on top, to test with the others. This was the first mouse (pictured above and below).
Watch Doug and Bill (above right) discussing this study and the first mouse.
On Exhibit: visit virtual and actual museum exhibits showcasing his innovations at the Smithsonian Museum, the Computer History Museum, and more. Visit On Exhibit and Special Collections by Institution for details.
3c
Watch "The Computer Mouse" video short on how the mouse changed lives and enabled the personal computing industry to take off and thrive.
3d
Logitech celebrates "ONE BILLION MICE SOLD!"making headlines in 2008. See Logitech's press release, blog post with links to press, and their billionth mouse celebration page with links to press kits filled with fun facts and timelines. The event coincided with our 40th anniversary celebration of Doug's landmark demo, titled "Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing". Enjoy the following timeline from Logitech's press kit marking their 2008 celebrations.
3h
Mouse timeline scroll by Logitech(swipe/scroll left<->right)
In 1965 Engelbart's team published the final report of their study evaluating the efficiency of the various screen-selection techniques. They had pitted the mouse against a handful of other devices, some off the shelf, some of their own making (see Mouse Alternatives below). The mouse won hands down, and was thus included as standard equipment in their research moving forward (see Screen-Selection Experiments below for links to key reports and papers detailing these experiments). In 1967, SRI filed for the patent on the mouse, under the more formal name of "x,y position indicator for a display system," and the patent was awarded in 1970.
4a
Enter, the Keyset: To further increase efficiency, Engelbart's team thought to offer a companion to the mouse – a device for the left hand to enter commands or text while the right hand was busy pointing and clicking (shown above). After trying out several variations, they settled on a telegraph-style "keyset"
with five piano-like keys. This keyset also became standard equipment in the lab (pictured below). Both devices were introduced to the public in Engelbart's 1968 demonstration, now known as the "Mother of All Demos" (see Check It Out below for links to selected video footage of the debut, historic photos, and more).
4b
The mouse we built for the [1968] show was an early prototype that had three buttons. We turned it around so the tail came out the top. We started with it going the other direction, but the cord got tangled when you moved your arm.
I first started making notes for the mouse in '61. At the time, the popular device for pointing on the screen was a light pen, which had come out of the radar program during the war. It was the standard way to navigate, but I didn't think it was quite right.
Two or three years later, we tested all the pointing gadgets available to see which was the best. Aside from the light pen there was the tracking ball and a slider on a pivot. I also wanted to try this mouse idea, so Bill English went off and built it.
We set up our experiments and the mouse won in every category, even though it had never been used before. It was faster, and with it people made fewer mistakes. Five or six of us were involved in these tests, but no one can remember who started calling it a mouse. I'm surprised the name stuck.
We also did a lot of experiments to see how many buttons the mouse should have. We tried as many as five. We settled on three. That's all we could fit. Now the three-button mouse has become standard, except for the Mac.
Engelbart and his team tested a half dozen
pointing devices
for speed and accuracy. These included the mouse, and a knee
apparatus (pictured below, right), both created in-house, along with several off the shelf devices such as DEC's Grafacon (pictured below, center, modified for testing purposes), a joy stick, and a light pen. See Screen-Selection Experiments below for links to more details and photos. They also experimented with a foot pedal device as well as a head mounted device, neither of which made it into the final tests.
5a
From Doug Engelbart's experiments with pointing devices in the mid 1960s
In the 1950s, Doug Engelbart set his sights on a lofty goal -- to develop dramatically better ways to support intellectual workers around the globe in the daunting task of finding solutions to larger and larger problems with greater speed and effectiveness than ever before imagined. His goal was to revolutionize the way we work together on such tasks. He saw computers, at the time used primarily for number crunching, as a new medium for advancing the state of the art in collaborative knowledge work. Building on technology available at the time, his research agenda required that his team push the envelope on all fronts: they had to expand the boundaries of display technology and interactive computing and human-computer interface, help launch network computing, and inventhypermedia, groupware, knowledge management, digital libraries, computer supported software engineering, client-server architecture, the mouse, etc. on the technical front, as well as pushing the frontiers in process reengineering and continuous improvement, including inventing entirely new organizational concepts and methodologies on the human front. Engelbart even invented his own innovation strategy for accelerating the rate and scale of innovation in his lab which, by the way, proved very effective. His seminal work garnered many awards, and sparked a revolution that blossomed into the Information Age and the Internet. But as yet we have only scratched the surface of the true potential Engelbart envisioned for dramatically boosting our collective IQ in the service of humankind's greatest challenges. Check out his Call to Action and the Engelbart Academy to learn about his prescient message for the future.
6a
Let us consider an augmented
architect at work. He sits at a working station that
has a visual display screen some three feet on a side;
this is his working surface, and is controlled by a
computer (his "clerk") with which he can communicate
by means of a small keyboard and various other devices.
7a1
He is designing a building. He
has already dreamed up several basic layouts and structural
forms, and is trying them out on the screen. The surveying
data for the layout he is working on now have already
been entered, and he has just coaxed the clerk to show
him a perspective view of the steep hillside building
site with the roadway above, symbolic representations
of the various trees that are to remain on the lot,
and the service tie points for the different utilities.
The view occupies the left two-thirds of the screen.
With a pointer he indicates two points of interest,
moves his left hand rapidly over the keyboard, and the
distance and elevation between the points indicated
appear on the right-hand third of the screen.
7a2
"Consider a future device for
individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private
file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at
random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which
an individual stores all his books, records, and communications,
and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted
with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged
intimate supplement to his memory.
7b1
"It consists of a desk, and while
it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is
primarily the piece of furniture at which he works.
On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which
material can be projected for convenient reading. There
is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise
it looks like an ordinary desk.
7b2
In the early 1970s, the mouse migrated from Doug's lab at SRI to Xerox PARC (along with some of his team), and later to Apple when Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, and beyond. One of the most common myths about the mouse is the mistaken belief that it was invented at Xerox PARC. Note that the first mouse was built in 1964, the patent for the mouse was filed in 1967, and demonstrated to an audience of over a thousand in 1968, by which time production models were in operational use throughout Doug's lab. Xerox PARC did not exist until 1970.
8a
MouseSite - the definitive website on the Mouse hosted by Stanford University, especially their Photos of the First Mouse page. They also curate video of the 1968 demo and other significant archives from Doug Engelbart's work.
9a2
Planimeter: Planimeters are often used by surveyors, foresters, geologists, geographers, engineers, and architects to measure areas on maps of any kind and scale, as well as plans, blueprints, or any scale drawing or plan. (source: Ben Meadows). See How Planimeters Are Used for some great visuals (thanks to Dr. Robert Foote at Wabash College), and this photo of geographers using planimeter for the 1940 census (thanks to the National Archives). See also Wikipedia's more complete Planimeter article with links to other resources.
9a7
Screen-Selection Experiments:Display-Selection Techniques for Text Manipulation, William K. English, Douglas C. Engelbart and Melvyn L. Berman, March 1967. This paper describes an experimental study into the relative merits of different CRT display-selection devices as used within a real-time, computer-display, text-manipulation system in use at Stanford Research Institute. The mouse was tested against other devices and found to be the most accurate and efficient. See also the 1965 Report and the 1966 Quarterly Report detailing their screen-selection experiments.
9b1
hide header
Watch how the mouse changed lives
The first mouse plugged into it's display workstation
- circa 1964 
1968 version includes three-button mouse and five-key keyset
DEC's gyro-stlye "Grafacon"
