SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Computer mouse co-inventor William English dies at 91:
One of the pioneers of the modern computer interface has passed away: the New York Times reports that William "Bill" English died on July 26th from respiratory failure at the age of 91. Alongside Douglas Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute, English helped develop the first computer mouse and put together a 1968 "Mother of All Demos" that outlined many concepts that would come to PCs over the decades, such as graphical user interfaces, online text editing, video calls and hypertext links.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Computer Mouse Co-inventor William English Dies at 91
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 14 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:14PM (1 child)
Boomer says: That was back when REAL mice had balls!
Millennial says: If you look at 32:00, you see that mouse had two wheels, and no balls!
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:24PM
Boomer engineer says: the ball was a convenient way to transfer motion up to two axles that spun encoder wheels. So even mice with a ball, still had "two wheels", just hidden inside. Because of the size ratio (gear ratio) between ball and axles, the encoders spun faster than the ball. In turn this meant that the encoder wheels could have fewer&larger slots so the optical detectors weren't so critical.