History - Inventions and discoveries - Computer mouse - Human-computer interaction - United States - History of inventions
Which American computer pioneer developed the concept of the computer mouse?
Correct!
In the early 1960s, Douglas Carl Engelbart developed the idea for a new type of input device at the Stanford Research Institute that would make it easier to select objects on a computer screen. The Computer History Museum dates its original idea to 1961 and a first draft to 1963. The engineer William Kirk English built the first wooden prototype based on Engelbart's concept. The device moved on two wheels arranged at right angles to each other, which recorded the movement across a table surface. The computer mouse became famous on December 9, 1968, when Douglas Carl Engelbart demonstrated it at a groundbreaking public computer demonstration in San Francisco. The presentation, later known as the “Mother of All Demos,” also demonstrated concepts such as hypertext, multiple screen windows, and video conferencing. Interestingly, Engelbart was not entirely alone: engineers at the German company Telefunken also independently developed a mouse in the mid-1960s. Their design already used a ball to capture motion.
Douglas Carl Engelbart developed the concept of the computer mouse; William Kirk English built the first wooden prototype using this concept.
