History

The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin
as part of a post-World War II-era radar plotting system called Comprehensive D
isplay System (CDS). Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scient
ific Service. Benjamin's project used analog computers to calculate the future p
osition of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a u
ser with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed a
nd invented a ball tracker[5] called roller ball[6] for this purpose.
The device was patented in 1947,[6] but only a prototype using a metal ball roll
ing on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built[5] and the device was kept as a m
ilitary secret.[5]
Another early trackball was built by British electrical engineer Kenyon Taylor i
n collaboration with Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff. Taylor was part of the ori
ginal Ferranti Canada, working on the Royal Canadian Navy's DATAR (Digital Autom
ated Tracking and Resolving) system in 1952.[7]
DATAR was similar in concept to Benjamin's display. The trackball used four disk
s to pick up motion, two each for the X and Y directions. Several rollers provid
ed mechanical support. When the ball was rolled, the pickup discs spun and conta
cts on their outer rim made periodic contact with wires, producing pulses of out
put with each movement of the ball. By counting the pulses, the physical movemen
t of the ball could be determined. A digital computer calculated the tracks, and
sent the resulting data to other ships in a task force using pulse-code modulat
ion radio signals. This trackball used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball
. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project as well.[8][9]
Early mouse patents. From left to right: Opposing track wheels by Engelbart, Nov
. 1970, U.S. Patent 3,541,541. Ball and wheel by Rider, Sept. 1974, U.S. Patent
3,835,464. Ball and two rollers with spring by Opocensky, Oct. 1976, U.S. Patent
3,987,685
Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI Int
ernational) invented his first mouse prototype in the 1960s with the assistance
of his lead engineer Bill English.[10] They christened the device the mouse as e
arly models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a ta
il and generally resembling the common mouse.[11] Engelbart never received any r
oyalties for it, as his employer SRI held the patent, which ran out before it be
came widely used in personal computers.[12] The invention of the mouse was just
a small part of Engelbart's much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intel
lect via the Augmentation Research Center.[13][14]
Inventor Douglas Engelbart's computer mouse, showing the wheels that make contac
t with the working surface.
Several other experimental pointing-devices developed for Engelbart's oN-Line Sy
stem (NLS) exploited different body movements
for example, head-mounted devices
attached to the chin or nose but ultimately the mouse won out because of its spe
ed and convenience.[15] The first mouse, a bulky device (pictured) used two whee
ls
Operation
Further information: Point and click
A mouse typically controls the motion of a pointer in two dimensions in a graphi
cal user interface (GUI). The mouse turns movements of the hand backward and for
ward, left and right into equivalent electronic signals that in turn are used to
move the pointer.

The relative movements of the mouse on the surface are applied to the position o
f the pointer on the screen, which signals the point where actions of the user t
ake place, so that the hand movements are replicated by the pointer.[22] Clickin
g or hovering (stopping movement while the cursor is within the bounds of an are
a) can select files, programs or actions from a list of names, or (in graphical
interfaces) through small images called "icons" and other elements. For example,
a text file might be represented by a picture of a paper notebook, and clicking
while the cursor hovers this icon might cause a text editing program to open th
e file in a window.
Different ways of operating the mouse cause specific things to happen in the GUI
:[22]
Click: pressing and releasing a button.
(left) Single-click: clicking the main button.
(left) Double-click: clicking the button two times in quick succession c
ounts as a different gesture than two separate single clicks.
(left) Triple-click: clicking the button three times in quick succession
.
Right-click: clicking the secondary button.
Middle-click: clicking the tertiary button.
Drag: pressing and holding a button, then moving the mouse without releasing
. (Using the command "drag with the right mouse button" instead of just "drag" w
hen one instructs a user to drag an object while holding the right mouse button
down instead of the more commonly used left mouse button.)
Button chording (a.k.a. Rocker navigation).
Combination of right-click then left-click.
Combination of left-click then right-click or keyboard letter.
Combination of left or right-click and the mouse wheel.
Clicking while holding down a modifier key.
Variants
Mechanical mice
Mouse mechanism diagram.svg
Operating an opto-mechanical mouse.
moving the mouse turns the ball.
X and Y rollers grip the ball and transfer movement
Optical encoding disks include light holes.
Infrared LEDs shine through the disks.
Sensors gather light pulses to convert to X and Y vectors.
The German company Telefunken published on their early ball mouse on October 2,
1968.[17] Telefunken's mouse was sold as optional equipment for their computer s
ystems. Bill English, builder of Engelbart's original mouse,[23] created a ball
mouse in 1972 while working for Xerox PARC.[24]
The ball mouse replaced the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate
in any direction. It came as part of the hardware package of the Xerox Alto com
puter. Perpendicular chopper wheels housed inside the mouse's body chopped beams
of light on the way to light sensors, thus detecting in their turn the motion o
f the ball. This variant of the mouse resembled an inverted trackball and became
the predominant form used with personal computers throughout the 1980s and 1990
s. The Xerox PARC group also settled on the modern technique of using both hands
to type on a full-size keyboard and grabbing the mouse when required.
Mechanical mouse, shown with the top cover removed. The scroll wheel is grey, to
the right of the ball.
The ball mouse has two freely rotating rollers. They are located 90 degrees apar
t. One roller detects the forward backward motion of the mouse and other the left ri

ght motion. Opposite the two rollers is a third one (white, in the photo, at 45
degrees) that is spring-loaded to push the ball against the other two rollers. E
ach roller is on the same shaft as an encoder wheel that has slotted edges; the
slots interrupt infrared light beams to generate electrical pulses that represen
t wheel movement. Each wheel's disc, however, has a pair of light beams, located
so that a given beam becomes interrupted, or again starts to pass light freely,
when the other beam of the pair is about halfway between changes