In the contemporary world of computer technology, famous personalities such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Tim Berners etc. will never be forgotten for their remarkable contribution to computing which took the entire world to a next level. But we usually do not remember other ingenious contributors who developed or invented other computer-related devices such as keyboard and mouse which everybody uses on a daily basis. Even the people who deal with computer manufacturing or assemblies or the persons who are associated with computer-related business and servicing and deal with mice and keyboardsregularly every now and then may also do not know who invented mouse and keyboard.
Can you imagine how the computer was functioning when there was no mouse? In fact, before the mouse was invented all commands were only operated through text interfaces by typing. Eventually, computer operation by typing texts command was too much time consuming and ultimately difficult too. The first idea of a computer mouse was generated by Douglas Engelbart in the year 1961 when they were in a conferencethinking on developing a graphical computer interface. His idea basically was around the planimeter which is normally used by the geographers and engineers while measuring distance on a map. The initial or first mouse prototypes were made out of wood comprising circuit board and two metal wheels which did not contact the surface where it was placed.
Eventually, Douglas Engelbart reworked and refined the first prototype and created the ball mouse in 1972 which was used worldwide until 1998. The mouse developed by Douglas Engelbart in 1972 with ball happens to get clogged with debris and dirt, and for this reason, a new version ofa optical mouse was created in 1980 which completely replaced the ball from the mouse. However, this optical mouse was very expensive and not affordable by individual users until 1988. The computer with standard mouse came to the market first was the Xerox PARC in the year 1970 which used graphical user interface for the first time.
There are basically three types of the mouse in the computing world namely the optical, the mechanical and the optomechanical. The mechanical mouse contains a ball at the bottom to make the mouse move whereas the optomechanical mouse has an optical sensor which detects the motion of the mouse. The optical mouse uses lase in order to detect the movement. Similar to the computer mouse, there are incredible facts about keyboards such as the QWERTY keyboard is almost a century world and was developed by Christopher Shole.
