Stanford Mouse Video Archive 140
serutan writes "Stanford University has a retro-cool series of video clips of a 1968 presentation that foreshadowed the Internet and marked the public debut of the mouse. It is a surreal, weirdly captivating piece of computer history." Part of the site includes a solicitation for those who have memories and stories about the old days of computing, when programs were measured in inches and people felt they were lucky, lucky I tell you, to have ones and zeros.
We saw this recently - its got a hyperlink demo (Score:4, Informative)
Mouse is on display at The Tech (Score:4, Informative)
It's encased in a transparent plastic box and you can actually pick it up and study it at close. I was lucky enough to get a couple of snapshots of it.
Get a glimpse here [thetech.org].
Re:So Xerox stole thier ideas from these guys??? (Score:2, Informative)
If you were paying attention, you would know that these guys invented the mouse pointing device. Xerox PARC came up with the ball-driven mouse and was the first place the mouse really moved from a mere crufted-together tech-demo to a seriously usuable tool.
First mouse, but not first pointing device (Score:4, Informative)
Predating all of these was the sliding crank used as a target designator in the Nike missile system. This was a 2 degree of freedom crank; you could turn the crank, or slide the handle radially. This device is not well known, but can be seen at the restored launch site [nikemissile.org] in Marin County, CA. The guidance computer for the Nike was an analog system, not a digital computer, though.
Re:First mouse, but not first pointing device (Score:4, Informative)