The humble computer mouse celebrates its 40th anniversary today.On 9 December 1968 hi-tech visionary Douglas Engelbart first used one to demonstrate novel ways of working with computers.The first mouse that Dr Engelbart used in the demo at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (FJCC) was made of wood and had one button.Much of the technology shown off in the demo inspired the creation of the hardware and software now widely used.
Only now is Doug Engelbart's vision starting to be realised, said Dr Rulifson, and the world has yet to catch up with the ideas first aired in 1968."Half the vision has come along," said Dr Rulifson. "We could see the day when these things would be small enough to carry about."But," he added, "Doug was very frustrated with the stuff that grew up around the PC, because it's too static and paper-like."
