“10 November 1972: CERN’s Bent Stumpe places an order for 12 bowling balls for a total cost of 95 US dollars. Although not evident at first sight, he is buying the heart of some of the first tracking devices to be used in the SPS control room. Today, Bent Stumpe’s device would be called a desktop mouse…“
… from those bowling balls to the smaller things in current trackballs (which is more correct than “mouse”).
Quite surprising that several devices have been built at CERN’s by teams that didn’t know other colleagues were working on the same functionality… to the point of not knowing whether one device is older that another or who built it.
I like to think what the fiscal person must have been wondering when an engineer comes in asking to buy 12 bowling balls.
I bet if the CERN bowling alley sold beer we would be time traveling already.