We are all aware of the funny little object attached by a wire to our personal computer that is used to control a pointer (or "cursor") on the screen of the computer. It is called a "mouse". Did you ever wonder where this device originated? In this article, Liam Bannon tells some of the story behind the device, and the pioneering work of Doug Engelbart and his group, as well as providing a number of pointers to material that you can access on the Internet to learn more about these early days of interactive computing. Read on...

For many young people today, their first encounter with a computer system is with a personal computer that has a graphical user interface (GUI) - windows, icons, and a pointer on the screen. This pointer is controlled by the user, usually by moving an object called a "mouse" on a pad connected to the computer by a cord. These interfaces are sometimes referred to as WIMP¹ interfaces - Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointer. These "point and click"-type interfaces have become standard on personal computers, replacing the older "command line"-type interfaces where one had to know the name of every computer command and type it into the system in order to accomplish actions.

Even very young children seem to learn very quickly how the movements of the mouse affect the movement of the screen pointer. But where did the idea of themouse come from? You may be surprised to learn that although mice only began to be seen in public in the 80's with the advent of personal computers, the very first mouse was developed as far back as the early 60's! The mouse was just one of the novel devices developed on a ground-breaking research project on "Augmenting the Human Intellect" in California that was lead by one of the pioneers of interactive computing - Doug Engelbart. The picture at the top of the page shows Doug Engelbart, and the picture below shows the very first mouse that they developed.

Engelbart wished to amplify human intelligence by allowing people to work with their concepts in a new way - through the representation and manipulation of symbols on a computer. Engelbart mentions how he was influenced by the now-classic article of Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think", which initially appeared in 1945. Bush's article , specifically the notion of a mechanised personal workstation - "the memex", was visionary. He also visualized the indexing of items across different materials, working with multiple windows on material, being able to follow database trails made by others, and many other concepts which were developed further by Engelbart and are still being investigated by researchers today. Engelbart and his team Were involved in "augmenting the human intellect", the name of a famous report written by Engelbart in 1962 that was, and indeed still is, the basis for his work on developing a powerful computational environment for people to work on complex problems. He was interested in developing new tools and techniques for people to be able to represent and manipulate information on the computer, and had a vision of people working with powerful, highly responsive and interactive personal computer systems back in the 60's. You must remember that this was at a time when most computers took up an area the size of a large classroom, when input was in the form of punched cards, and when turnaround time to get output from the computer was several hours!

Engelbart's vision was indeed radical for the time. Nevertheless, he persuaded US funding agencies to support him, and he created the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) based at the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, just south of San Francisco. The group worked on novel ways to display information on screens, and on different kinds of input devices - joysticks, lightpens, hand-input devices, knee-input devices and even head- and foot-controlled devices. They even performed a number of experiments to test out which of these would be most effective, and it was during this time that they evolved the mouse tracking device, and found it to be a highly effective input medium. Why was it called a mouse? When asked this question more recently, Engelbart says he cannot really recall how it first came up, but once it was mentioned the name stuck, and so we still have this name 30 years on! What did surprise Engelbart, however, was how long it took the rest of the computer world to catch on to the usefulness of this device, which did not really become incorporated into computers on a wide scale until the E3M PC in the early 80's. As you can see, the first mouse had one button on it, but they experimented with several different configurations, some with 3 buttons, as you can see in the picture below. Also notice how the first mouse had the cord emerging at the lower end of the device, whereas this switched to the top in later versions.

The name of the computer system developed by Engelbart and his colleagues was called NLS (oN-Line System) and it incorporated many novel ideas beyond the mouse pointing device. These included the one-handed chord keyset, which had 5 keys, on which were mapped to the alphabet. Commands could be entered from the keyset at a location specified by the mouse, so there would be no need to actually move your hands to the keyboard to execute commands. The picture below shows the design of the control console comprising a chord keyset, keyboard and mouse, all on a swivelling frame, developed by the furniture designer Herman Miller for the NLS team in the 60's.

Engelbart's team gave a presentation of their work in front of an audience of over a thousand people at the AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference on Dec. 9th, 1968 in San Francisco - connected live with their Lab in Menlo Park, 30 miles away. This demonstration has become legendary for its massive scale, cost and the excitement it generated. It was so far ahead of its time that the audience gasped. Even today, when I show excerpts from a tape of this demonstration in my UL classes, students are amazed at how impressive and visionary it was. It is hard to believe just how many of today's taken-for-granted notions of interactive computing originated in the work of the NLS team. 1 don't have time to discuss all of them, but just list a number of them here, and suggest you follow the pointers I give below for further reading and information. Their pioneering work included some of the first examples of:

· hypermedia - links between pieces of text and other media that can be navigated by the computer system, allowing one to jump from item to item,

· multiple windows on a screen

· display editing

· outline processing

· linking and in-field object addressing

· context-sensitive help

· collaborative computing, including video-conferencing and use of remote shared workspaces

· and, course, the mouse and chord keyset.

Engelbart's research group broke up in the early 70's, but many of his team went on to join the fledgling Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) research lab, and the justly celebrated work of PARC researchers on graphical user interfaces owes a debt to his early work. Recently on Dec. 9th, 1998, exactly 30 years after the original demonstration of the NLS system, there was a symposium (which I attended) honouring Engelbart and his ideas at Stanford University. Many famous figures in computing paid homage to his influence on their careers at this event, and acknowledged his pioneering work on interactive computing².

Engelbart's vision of augmentation extends from the individual, to the group, and through to the organization, and society itself. Today, Doug Engelbart is continuing to push his ideas on "bootstrapping organizations into the 2 1 " century" with a small but loyal band offollowers, as he believes there is still much work to be done in augmenting the capabilities of high-performance teams using collaborative technologies in modem organizations. Engelbart views the computer as an artefact that can assist people in their work, in collaborating with others, and in organizing information for large-scale projects. The emphasis is on supporting the person, and enhancing the possibilities for collaboration between people, rather than on reducing the control that people have over machines in the workplace, or attempting to automate human work activities. Perhaps that is the most important message that we can take away from his early, prophetic, writings and research.

Sources of information on the Web
http://unrev.stanford.edu/
Information on the 30th Anniversary Symposium at Stanford University on Dec. 9th, 1998 honouring Engelbart

http://unrev.stanford.edu/history/technology/technology.html
Some nice pictures of aspects of the early NLS system

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/histsci/ssvoral/engelbart/engfmst1-ntb.html
Oral history archives at Stanford - interviews with Doug Engelbart

http://www.bootstrap.org/dce-bio.htm
Historical material on Engelbart and NLS at Engelbart's current home site

http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/9.html
An online chapter on Engelbart's work by the well-know technology writer Howard Rheingold.

http://www.histech.rwth-aachen.de/www/quellen/engelbart/ahi62index.html
For those who want to read the original , this is an online version of Engelbart's original 1962 conceptual framework report to the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research!

* The title alludes to John Steinbeck's famous novel - "Of Mice and Men". There is no intention to ignore women, although it is the case that most of the players in Engelbart's croup were male.

¹ A different meaning to our everyday use of the term "wimp"!

² You can find details of the symposium at the Stanford web site http://unrev.standford.edu/

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