Talk:Mouse (computing)/Archive 2

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who invented the original mouse?

a user has changed the entry to Algar Epps of University of East Anglia, from Douglas Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute... So... who is is it really?CoolFox 03:42, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

That appears to be vandalism. The original inventor is definitely Engelbart; he conceived of the concept and directed its design (although under his direction, a draftsman drew the first diagram and technicians actually built the thing). There are dozens of boxes of Engelbart's personal papers at Stanford's Special Collections archives that substantiate his role. Plus there's the patent. --Coolcaesar 03:46, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks... that clears things up quite a bit. CoolFox 04:13, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

Single/double-clicking files

Advocates of multiple-button mice point out that the lack of additional mouse buttons often leads to clumsy workarounds in interfaces where more than one action may be useful for a given object. For example, in the Macintosh Finder, the user must single-click to select a file, and double-click in order to open that file.

Uh... isn't that what you do in Windows? Single-click to select, double-click to open? - furrykef (Talk at me) 13:27, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes. They got that from the Macintosh. The point made above is that doubleclick is a "clumsy workaround". The example probably isn't the best – a better one would be to point out that the Macintosh UI included contextual menus ("right click menus) brought up by ctrl+clicking. — David Remahl 13:58, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

I've changed the example, as suggested. Fieari 18:43, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Less experienced users

Anyone who regularly assists non-expert users on Windows systems will quickly learn that a very large number of users have never used any button other than the left-most button; a common result of demonstrating the use of right-clicking to make a menu pop up is the exclamation, "I didn't know you could do that!" This suggests that much of the value from multiple buttons would only be available to the average users if their training dramatically increased its emphasis on the power of the right button. Nor are many left-handed users aware that most platforms allow swapping right and left buttons.

Is this paragraph really nessesary? It also seems horribly unsourced. If its true that "Anyone who regularly assists..." knows these things, can't we get a specific quote somewhere? "This suggests..." can we get another quote here too? In fact, the whole paragraph seems somewhat POV in favor of single mouse buttons, which emphasizes the need for quoted sources. I'm considering removing the paragraph unless its cleaned up. I'll give it a little time though. Fieari 18:43, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Engelbart and number of buttons

In case somebody wonders where I got the idea that Engelbart would have added more buttons if he had had room for the switch mechanisms, it's from a video interview with him that I saw some time ago. Sorry I don't have a URL for that, but it should be googleable. PeteVerdon 19:17, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Development of the ball mouse

I'm looking for a source which can give us more detail about exactly who at Xerox PARC came up with the ball mouse (i.e. the large ball in the base, which is read to pick up motion). I have looked, and looked, but alas can come up with very little!

Neither Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning, nor Smith/Alexander, Fumbling the Future, the standard PARC histories have much at all about the mouse. I also looked through the fairly extensive original Alto documentation I have, but 'of course' it says nothing about the development of the mouse. Neither do the relevant articles in Goldberg's History of Personal Workstations, the standard academic work on the topic.

(As one history I saw laments, "Even the best general histories of computing make only passing mention to the mouse and its development ... the MouseSite web site .. unintentionally collapses the distance between the Engelbart mouse and its commercial descendants". This is sad, because it involved a lot of clever work to turn the Engelbart device into today's cheap and reliable mouse.)

Anyway, as best I can tell, the canonical story is that Bill English did it, but I'm not sure that's correct. A wonderful paper, mostly about the later development of the mouse, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Of Mice and Zen: Product Design and Invisible Innovation [1], says:

"Xerox engineers (including Engelbart's former collaborator English) redesigned the ARC mouse substantially for the Alto, making it smaller and lower-profile .. Just as important were their mechanical changes: they replaced the discs with a ball bearing whose motion was read by a pair of rollers connected to electrical brushes"

but it says nothing about who the "Xerox engineers" were, or gives a source. A person named Jack Hawley seems to have worked on that mouse as a contract employee:

Jack Hawley had worked on the Xerox mouse as a consultant during 1971 .. when Xerox PARC was developing its Alto .. mouse. [2]

which is confirmed by the fact that the Alto I mouse's motherboard has "HAWLEY-XEROX MOUSE" on it; and there are a couple of patents (U.S. Pat. No. 3,835,464 to Rider and U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,963 to Hawley et al., both assigned to Xerox Corporation) which may be relevant. Another patent says:

"The design of this mouse led to the use of ball bearings as wheels and optical shaft encoders to generate a two bit quadrature signalling code, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,963. The motion of a wheel caused a two bit output for a coordinate direction to form square waves in quadrature, with phase and frequency determined the direction and speed of travel. Each bit transition represented motion of one resolvable step .. Further development led to the employment of a ball or sphere instead of two wheels for more uniform tracking (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,835,464 and 3,987,685). Internally, the sphere itself was a trackball with shafts turning against the ball and with commutation as shaft encoders or optical disc encoders, the latter being disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,304,434." [3]

which is a bit hard to interpret (the Alto mouse used several different balls; the large one to contact the surface, and then a series of smaller ones around it) without actually reading the patents in question.

Anyway, does anyone have an info on this? I have sent email to Alex, and we'll see if he has any info. Noel (talk) 02:56, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I attended this talk at PARC in 2001, but apparently it was before the CHM started videotaping these (or maybe they just didn't make it avaialable for some reason--must ask...): http://computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1090020693 But since the part I recall is mostly just my own Q&A bit, I can't fill in the blanks very well, except on the optical mouse. Dicklyon 20:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

More on Ball Mouse

I always thought Chuck Thacker had invented the ball mouse. I worked for him at PARC, but that was after the Alto was in "production". I did look through the patents cited.

The first patent (3,304,434), by Koster is how you get X and Y off of a ball motion with shaft encoders and pulse output. It is not a Xerox patent. I believe this was used in trackballs, which predate mice.

The Hawley Patent (which Thacker is a co-inventor of), 3,892,963 is not a ball mouse. It's an angled wheel, and there are two of them. The drawings on this patent show the 3 horizontal button Alto design. The transducers are optical encoders with pulse output.

The Rider Patent,3,835,464 shows a ball, but uses potentiometer's to get readings off of the ball, as did early Englebart mice. Interestingly, the drawings don't look like the Alto mouse, but the text takes about 3 buttons.

Finally, 3,987,685 is by William Opocensky, which puts the ball of Rider with the shaft encoders of the Koster patent together to make the mouse that was used on the "production" Alto. Opocensky is in Los Angeles, which was where the Alto was actually manufactured (actually El Segundo). When PARC decided that they wanted a whole bunch of Alto's there was a small redesign for manufacturability that involved the Electronics Division in El Segundo. Probably Opocensky was given the task of making the production mouse.

So, it looks from the patent discussions that it was Rider that thought of using the ball, but the ball mouse as we know it now was Opencensky's work. In my experience at PARC, the name on the patent represented the folks who did most of the work, but lots of brainpower was freely given to them. So, English could have contributed ideas to Rider, as could have Thacker, Lampson, or anyone else there, but it looks to me like it was Rider that sat down in the lab and made one work. User:brosen 15:00, 05 January 2006 (UTC)

Apple and today's mouse

That same paper I mentioned above, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Of Mice and Zen: Product Design and Invisible Innovation [4] makes a really valuable point: that the Xerox mouse and the mouses we're all using today look similar on the outside, but are basically completely different inside.

Today's mice are both far cheaper, and far more reliable, than their Xerox predecessors, and it was the Apple-initiated design effort that produced the Mac/Lisa mouse which wrought that change. There's also a really cool trove of original material online at Stanford which documents the Apple mouse effort.

There is a contrary view:

Two Swiss scientists, Jean-Daniel Nicoud and Andre Guignard (the former a professor and the latter an engineer and precision watchmaker), are responsible for refining the PARC design into its modern form. Their work, sponsored by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, would lead directly to the formation of contemporary mouse manufacturer Logitech. [5]

but the case for the Apple mouse, as documented at the Stanford site, is pretty impressive.

Anyway, the point of this note was that our article doesn't bring out Apple's important role in the development of the modern mouse. I'm not one of the 'principal' editors here, so I'll leave adding this to someone else; I'll simply add a couple of external links. Noel (talk) 02:58, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Doom supports mouse

The id Software's game Doom supports mouse in reality. The only drawback is that sensitivity that you could enter in options is too small, but you could change it manually in the .cfg file.

Why a mouse is called a mouse

"It is called a mouse primarily because the cord on early models resembled the rodent's tail, and also because the motion of the pointer on the screen can be mouse-like."

Is the second explanation really valid? I've certainly never heard of it before.

StealthFox 19:09, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Additional buttons question

In the section 1.2.1 on Additional Buttons, it seems like any of the buttons may be customized or made into macros. Can someone cite the mouse that allows this?

Bryanlharris 12:50, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Microsoft IntelliMouse

There needs to be more mention of the significance of the Microsoft IntelliMouse. While it may not have been the original invention of the "wheel mouse", it was obviously the significant product that brought the idea to the market with mass appeal. IIRC, the Office 97 release was the big debut of Scroll technology, as all the Office 97 applications had native Wheel scrolling support.

As a post note, there is no IntelliMouse article in Wikipedia either, strangely. J. Straub 21:05, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I think Microsoft IntelliMouse can be credited as the first commercial mouse with a Scrolling Wheel. Microsoft IntelliMouse was introduced in 1996 [6] and became a commercial success in 1997 when Office 97 applications supported scrolling. --Ossiman 08:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The first commercial mouse with a scrolling wheel was the Mouse Systems ProAgio, which was for sale at least in 1995 [7]. [8] is a picture of one. I'll edit the main article to reflect this. Polpo 18:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I was working as a technical editor of a computer magazine and still remember when Mouse System's ProAgio came to the market. And according to my memory, it appeared definedly after MS Intellimouse and it was marginally significant because it was the first "clone" scroll wheel mouse.

Perhaps Intellimouse was originally published before 1996? Earliest mention of IntelliMouse from news is 13th February 1995 [9]. Can anyone else confirm what were the actual release dates of Intellimouse and ProAgio? Ossiman 23:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems that the original scroll wheel inventor is not clear. I found one Microsoft hate-site ([10]) claiming that Net-Pointe Mouse from PC Concepts, Kensington and Genius Mouse Easyscroll came out before Intellimouse. Hate site is of course a questionable source, but it raises a reasonable doubt.

However I think we can all agree that it was MS Intellimouse (and Office 97 with IE) that made scroll wheel widely known and pratically a basic mouse feature. Ossiman 00:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Optical v. Mechanical

I was reading this section and was wondering if anyone else found the following to be a contradiction: Also, maintenance of a broken mechanical mouse is much simpler, usually just simple cleaning. However, optical mice do not normally require any maintenance other than removing lint that might collect under the light emitter. It says that maintenance on the mechanical is easier then promptly says that maintenance on an optical mouse is usually only "removing lint". This would technically be an easier operation since cleaning your standard "ball" mouse requires removing the ball. -Thebdj 19:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

"Optical models will outperform mechanical mice on uneven, slick, squishy, sticky or loose surfaces, and generally in mobile situations lacking mouse pads." - there are not nearly enough descriptive words in this sentance. I recommend adding "rough", "fluffy", "moist" and "decomposing" at the very least. certainly it is not a professional sounding article if it doesn't have all these words.

Laser Mice

This might be sub-grouping things too much, but shouldn't Laser Mice be included as a sub underneath Optical Mice or at the least a mention at the end of the section on optical mice. There are not many difference between the two and technically a laser mouse is still an optical mouse it just so happens it has a laser LED instead of the traditional LED that was used in previous optical mice. -Thebdj 16:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Communication protocols and adapters

I suggest to at least mention the other protocols (serial, USB, more?) besides the ones described (PS/2 and Apple) (better also describe the protocol), plus to explain that the different protocols are the reason simple cable adapters work only if the mouse supports both protocols in its hardware.

Let me know if there are any objections or other considerations.

BTW, if there are volunteers that have the knowledge at hand, please go ahead (I could do it only after some additional fact researching).

Gandalf44 07:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

PS/2 protocols for the keyboard and mouse, the same site has USB protocols for the keyboard and mouse. Finally, here is some info on Serial and PS/2. Combined the three pages should give enough info. I wouldn't beat around serial too long though since it is pretty much dead (and not just for mice). Of course, PS/2 is slowly dying as they try to force more and more people over towards USB. -Thebdj 16:00, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The original Mac mouse circa 1985 used a simple direct parallel protocol on a DB-9 connector, pre-ADB, IIRC. It should at least be mentioned here, and explained in detail somewhere. The detailed explanation would help people understand the whole two-physical-axis concept, and encoding of movement. *** Whether or not serial mice are dead, they should be clearly documented in an encyclopedia -- forever. *** There should be a mention that USB mice can sometimes be connected PS/2 with a simple converter, sometimes not -- and an explanation or link explaining exactly why. 69.87.200.23 11:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Single sensor per wheel (opto-mechanical) direction detection

I've yet to find any information as to how direction is detected on such a mouse (e.g. MS Serial mouse 2.0) I have read about the 2 sensors per wheel mice and how they determine direction, but this mouse I have opened up does not show any hints as to how it detects direction. I think an update with such info would be great. (edit 2/9/2006) I figured out that some mice have 2 sensors in the same package one above the other with a single IR LED. I just hadn't seen the 3rd lead.

I agree. The article doesn't explain right now how mechanical mice can detect if a movement goes up or down (or left or right). --Abdull 10:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

FYI - the "single sensor" you're seeing in your mouse has two detector cells, usually mounted vertically. The single LED shines through the slots in the wheels, the difference in the vertical position of the two cells means the edge of the slot's shadow passes over each cell out of phase. You design the geometry of the slotted wheels so the resulting signals are 90 deg out of phase to improve the s/n of the system.

The direction of movement is determined by which of the two signals changes state first.

This is called quadrature -- a key concept to explain in any article about detecting/encoding axial motion. -69.87.203.252 13:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Spam from Razer USA Ltd

There were at least 4 links to this company, all sounding like text from a product catalog. Smells like spam to me.

"Mouse speed"

I think describing counts per inch/whatever real-world distance as speed is misleading. Precision would be a better term, because a mouse with more CPI works on a finer grid. By scaling the reported movement it's possible to match the so-called speed of another mouse, but on a grid with differently-spaced points. Also, "cursor acceleration can be used to make the cursor accelerate when the mouse is moving at a constant speed" is incorrect. What happens in reality is that pointer movement becomes disproportionally faster as the mouse is sped up, and it often includes a slowdown at low speeds to assist novices in what I call pixelwork. This whole precision/speed/acceleration subject, while it is actually quite simple, seems to be poorly understood, and we should not add to the chaos. --62.194.128.65 (dynamic) 13:00, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

It's been a while and nothing has happened. Would a banner help? I can't seem to get the courage to do the work myself. It's also hard to find good references on this subject. --62.194.128.65 (apparently not that dynamic) 21:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The actual term used in the industry is resolution. You are correct, the main effect is how precisely the cursor tracks your motion over very small motions. Another place you can see the effect is by looking at how smoothly you can draw a curve in a painting program. "Fast" mice will typically send large reports, resulting in a larger distance between points on the curve - the paint program will then draw straight line segments between the points. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.92.160 (talk • contribs) 06:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Resolution does seem like a better term to me. I didn't begin to notice the straight line segments after switching from 400 to 1600 CPI. I'd noticed them before that, and I can only make them longer (higher max pointer speed) and more divergent (higher max pointer acceleration - real acceleration, not the annoying transfer function) now. Anyway, I'm currently locked in a text browser, and I'd rather make this system more useful than edit Wikipedia. --62.194.128.65 18:54, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Alterate word for rodent---Sonjaaa 07:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)haters?

Weird question, but: Is there a suitable synonym or term I could use instead of "mouse", because I find mice (the animal) very unpleasant, and I don't like the idea of having my hand on one and moving it around. I'd like to use a different word to not have to think of the rodent.--Sonjaaa 04:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Weird question, indeed. So make up a name and use it. There are trackpads and trackballs, so how about a trackrodent, trackmammal, or trackblob? Dicklyon 22:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

maybe simply pointing device, "pointer" or "tracker"??--Sonjaaa 07:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Security of wireless mice

We all know the risks of using wireless keyboards (if you don't, find out now!). There is also a smaller risk in using wireless mice. What I don't know is the comparable risk of conventional mice over trackballs. Does anyone know if wireless trackballs are safer? 86.7.209.101 11:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason they would be. It's the use of the input that matters, not how it is input, at least as long as things don't get obscure. --62.194.128.65 21:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Inertial mouse - error?

Is the very short paragraph that is the section titled "Inertial mice", it says that inertial mice operate using gyroscopes. This is impossible, unless the inertial mouse is more of a joystick held like a mouse, since a gyroscope can only sense rotation about an axis, not linear movement. To detect linear movement inertially, accelerometers are necessary. 71.242.69.154 07:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

For marketing purposes, some of these mice have been mis-labelled as "gyro" mice. If real gyros are being generally replaced by various solid-state accelerometer sensors, there could even be said to be some basis for such mis-representation.-69.87.203.252 13:49, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Mouse as verb?

I've heard instructor say "mouse over to the browser window." Should some mention of mouse as verb be mentioned in this entry? --Navstar 23:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

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