People have been interacting with computers for well over 50 years. In the early 1950s researchers from Stanford Research Lab, Xerox PARC and MIT paved the waved the way for what would be a burgeoning ecosystem of pointing devices. The original mouse, created by Douglas Engelbart, was to be an inexpensive alternative to the light pen. Engelbart proposed his idea to Robert Taylor, who “was on the lookout for new ways of using computers to make them more useful, more interactive in some sense.”

The mouse appeared commercially as a pointing device for the Xerox Star but wasn’t made popular until it was released with the first Apple Macintosh. It’s now an integral part of the WIMP human-computer model we take for granted today.

Peter Horvath

DATAR 1952

Light Pen 1952

Sketchpad 1963

RAND Tablet 1964

Engelbart 1968

Rollkugel 1968

Xerox 8010 Star 1981

Smakey 1981

Apple Lisa 1983

IBM PC 1983

PERQ 3 1985

Hawley DEC 1986

Apple Desktop 1986

Logitech 3 Button 1988

Logitech MouseMan 1990

Infrared PC mouse 1991

ProAgio 1995

Pinch Gloves 1995

Microsoft Intellimouse 1996

Apple “Puck” USB 1998

Logitech Optical 1999

Apple Pro 2000

P5 Glove 2001

Apple Mighty 2003

Wacom Graphire 2005

Ninentdo Wiimote 2006

Logitech MX Revolution 2006

Multi-touch (FTIR) 2006

Tablet Mouse 2008

Logitech Gesture Mouse 2008

Sony Mouse Phone 2009

Skype MouseFone 2009

Lite-On Moldable 2009

Jelly Click 2009

Elecom Scope Node 2009

Microsoft Arc 2009

Microsoft BlueTrack 2009

Razer Naga 2009

Hillcrest Loop Controller 2009

Orbita 2009

3D City Mouse 2009

3D Desktop Mouse 2009

iPhone AirMouse 2009

SpacePilot 2009

Ring Mouse 2009

OpenOffice 2009

Apple Magic 2009

Microsoft Multitouch 2009

Canesta Gesture 2009

MIT Sixth Sense 2009

openframeworks 2009

10 GUI 2009

Project Natal 2010