Ask your students when the mouse was invented and I bet most of them won’t go as far back as 1968 for their answer! Embedded below is a video of the first mouse demonstration.
Dr. Douglas Engelbart used a wooden mouse with one button at a demonstration during the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) in 1968. The mouse, which was actually constructed by Bill English, was used to demonstrate a computer system called the NLS. The NLS was light years ahead of the uses mainframe computers were being put to at the time and this demonstration showed how text files could be clipped, copied and pasted (all key functions in word processors and Windows…which hadn’t been invented yet!). The NLS was also used to demonstrate how users could use computers to collaborate on document design and editing (the first Wiki?).Keep in mind that Arpanet, which was the precursor to the modern Internet hadn’t even been set up at this point.
The concepts used in the NLS were so advanced that the folks that designed it had to build their own components (hence the mouse made of wood). The NLS became the first program to be used on Arpanet when it came into being in 1969. However, the NLS was difficult to learn to use as it was targeted for use by highly trained computing professionals and never was deployed commercially. But it did lay the groundwork for many functions of the personal computers that we have today.
So light the candles and pass a piece of cake in celebration of the birthday of the computer mouse!
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