Many of us would be surprised to know that the touch and tablet based interface was actually invented before the modern day mouse. Further developments saw the inclusion of a scroll dial, extra buttons and even gyroscopic capabilities in some models that detected hand waves. Also, most mouse model designs have used either a two button or a three button interface, with the exception of Apple that had stayed with a simplified one button interface through and through. Optical mouses were made affordable by using a rubber tracking ball that worked in a way similar to the original trackball technology. It was many years later that the mouse was used famously with the Xerox Alto at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre.In 1979, it was this very same PARC lab that was (now famously) toured by Steve Jobs, and is said to have been the source of inspiration for the mouse-driven interface that Apple eventually developed for the highly succesful Macintosh computers released in the 1970s.(and as some would say, the Microsoft Windows interface as well) Each contact conveyed a certain movement to the digital computer which used that to plot the position of the pointer on the display. Whenever the ball was rolled, the movement of the connected discs created signals at contacts with wires in the device. This entire idea had evolved from earlier developments of a trackball, which involved multiple rolling discs with a rolling ball. They actually named it the mouse due to the cord extending out of the back portion of the device, which looked similar to a tail. Douglas Engelbart and his lead engineer Bill English made their first working mouse prototype in the 1960s in their lab at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The technical innovation behind a computer mouse was already in place even 50 years ago. Case in point - the scroll lock Have you seen anyone actually using their keyboard to scroll anymore? Another example is the System Request (SysRq) key, from mainframe days. In spite of all these, the alternatives didn’t really catch on.Īctually, there are vestiges of the keyboard’s usage as a pre-mouse era input device that are still evident on most present day keyboards. In fact, there are a number of features about the current layout that are obvious shortcomings, like the single handed typing of many common words (was, were), left handed dominance, letters frequently used together not placed close etc. The initial design was inherited from typewriters as the QWERTY layout, which was never really changed although alternatives, like Dvorak layout, claim better speed and lower fatigue. Re-programming or re-typing involved removing and rearranging cards or sometimes inserting entirely new ones into the sequence.ĭerived mainly from the teleprinters and key punches of the yesteryears, keyboards made inputting information a very simple task of re-keying the statement compared to the complete removal and reinsertion of cards in the punchcard system. Since the census had 80 Questions, the key punch cards had 80 columns - a number that carried his legacy in the form of 80 column computer screens for decades as well as the company he created, which later became part of IBM.Ī step further, multiple punches could represent letters and numbers, which were also written on top of each column so that the cards could be read normally by eye. Around 1890, Herman Hollerith developed the first key punch device to tabulate the results of the 1890 Census in the USA. Although there were other earlier ways to input information into a computing device like switches and dials, the keypunch and the punch-card methods were the first to have widespread usage for entering, storing and retrieving data. Key punches were around since as early as the 1800s in the form of Jacquard loom cards. From punchcards to motion detection, let us see how we arrived here. With the ease of gliding our hands on our touchscreens or directly talking to our devices, it is very easy to forget the evolution of input devices in the last century since computing devices were introduced. But computers weren’t invented with input devices in mind, atleast not the ones we use now. In fact, many of us would probably recall the peripheral first and the rodent later, upon hearing the word “mouse” - a quick google search will reveal how true this is. When asked to picture a computer, here is possibly nobody who will do so without including the ubiquitous keyboard and mouse.
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