The history of the "Computer Mouse"

These days the computer mouse is a very important input device for your desktop computer. But not too long ago that there was no computer mouse and had no graphic user interface (GUI) Data was only entered into by the keyboard. In 1972 Bill English developed the “Ball Mouse”. This was a ball placed in a box which came into contact with two rollers. These rollers spun wheels which generated electrical pulses which represented speed and direction.

There were many problems with the ball design was that the ball often became dirty and would not function properly. In 1980 they created a solution and this was the “Optical Mouse” However this design was not cheap and was too expensive to be used worldwide. It wasn’t until around 1998 that the optical mouse was cheaper to produce. The Optical Mouse then was implement into the consumer market for an average consumer to buy. Today the Optical Mouse has completely replaced the “Ball Mouse”

Image by: w3y