Mouse turns 40 (multiple photos)

On December 9, 1968, Engelbart's team used a mouse to control a networked computer system for The first time, and the demonstration was dubbed "The Mother of All Demos."

On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) demonstrated for the first time how humans can control computers and networks with a mouse. To commemorate this great invention, SRI celebrated the 40th anniversary of the mouse on December 9, 2008.

The first mouse prototype

Reference website:

SRI Mouse Memorial Website

Mouse net

BBC film

As an electrical engineering student, Engelbart began to imagine possible ways to display all the information on the image tube display, dreaming of being able to "travel" in various information worlds. In 1968, Doug Engelbart founded and led SRI's Augmentation Research Center (ARC). On Dec. 9, he and his team of young Computer scientists and electronics engineers gave a 90-minute public multimedia presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, The show was dubbed "The Mother of All Demos".

The mother of shows-40 years ago, the autumn Joint Computer Conference site

At the world conference, Engelbart's team was the first to use a mouse to control a networked computer system, demonstrating hypertext linking, instant text editing, flexible visual control for multiple Windows, and remote conferencing with shared screens. This is also the mouse that became commonly used on computers; Logitech Electronics, the leading manufacturer of the mouse, also announced on the 40th anniversary of the mouse that it had shipped more than 1 billion mice.

The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) says on its website that the mouse is one of SRI's great original inventions. Doug Engelbart designed the mouse in the early 1960s while studying human interaction with computers, and Bill English, SRI's chief engineering officer, created the world's first prototype mouse in 1964. The original design had a wooden shell and a single red button, and a replica is currently displayed in the lobby of SRI headquarters.

Then the mouse had a multi-button design, and one or two wheels were used to translate the mouse's displacement into a cursor on the screen. The "XY Position Indicator for a Display System" is arguably the basic patent for the invention of the mouse, of which Engelbart is also an inventor.

The behind-the-scenes work of the show

In recognition of Engelbart's contributions, President Clinton awarded Engelbart the "National Medal of Technology" in 2000, the highest scientific and technological honor