The History of the Computer and the Mouse

    Who really invented the computer? That’s what you should ask yourself. A computer is a machine that helps you with a lot of stuff. You could go online and find any kind of information. You could play games, download pictures, and any kind of information your looking for the Internet would have it. I’m also going to write about the Computer mouse.

   The history of computers starts out about 2000 years ago, at the birth of the abacus, a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. When these beads are moved around, according to programming rules memorized by the user, all regular arithmetic problems can be done. Another important invention around the same time was the Astrolabe, used for navigation. In the 1930s and 1940s "a computer" meant a person doing calculations, and to indicate a machine doing calculations you would say “automatic computer”. In the 1960s people still talked about the digital computer as opposed to the analog computer.

     Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add, and, after changing some things around, multiply. Leibniz invented a special stepped gear mechanism for introducing the addend digits, and this is still being used. 

      In 1964, the first prototype computer mouse was made to use with a graphical user interface, 'windows'. Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels in 1970, describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system. "It was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end," Engelbart revealed about his invention. His version of windows was not considered paten table, but Douglas Engelbart has over 45 other patents to his name. Throughout the '60s and '70s, while working at his own lab, Engelbart dedicated himself to creating a hypermedia groupware system called NLS. Most of his accomplishments, including the mouse and windows, were part of NLS.

    In 1968, a 90-minute, staged public demonstration of a networked computer system was held at the Augmentation Research Center the first public appearance of the mouse, windows, hypermedia with object linking and addressing, and video teleconferencing.

    Double of $500,000, the world's largest single prize for invention and innovation. In 1998, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.Currently, Douglas Engelbart is the director of his company, Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, California, which promotes the concept of Collective IQ. Ironically, Bootstrap is housed rent free courtesy of the Logitech Corp., a famous manufacturer of computer mice.

    Well what I wrote in the body of this paragraph was about the Computer and the computer mouse. I also told you when was the computer invented. What did people do before the computer? , and a lot of other things. Another thing that I wrote about was the computer mouse. I told you when was it invented and a lot of other things too. Well thank you for reading my report on Computers and Mouse Computers.

                       References

    (Author) Anonymous Computer mouse (http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/)  (2000)