Doug Englebart worked on a project for Stanford Research Institute to develop a manual method for manipulating data on a computer screen in 1963, with a grant from NASA. He’d been mulling over the idea since 1951. Bill English, who actually built the mouse (out of wood) based on Englebart’s design, later moved to Xerox PARC, and refined the invention. It took a long time to catch on. Most people never heard of a computer mouse until Apple debuted the Macintosh in the 80’s. And nobody can remember who first called it a “mouse.”
the idea for a Mouse and GUI is from the wee days of the computer world, BEFORE displays were created.
Hakan Lans is a famous man in Sweden. Two of his inventions are used by almost everyone on a daily basis – the computer mouse and the VGA color display for computers. Hakan Lans was the inventor of both and has patents to prove it.
Patents mean nothing. Besides inventions can occur simultaniously in different places. Think of Farenheit and Celcius for example.
Patent’s don’t prove the “invention” they only prove the “registration of the invention”.
Hakan Lans of Sweden? Sorry, never heard of him. But I’m interested in computer history, so any links? In English, or på svenska?
Anyway, also here in Finland they taught me at the university that Doug Englebart was the man behind PC mouse. Some of his mouses had something like 5 buttons, one for each finger, and he used it like a keyboard to write text too. And he didn’t invent only that, but he was also one of the major innovators of hypertext too. Unlike Ted Nelson’s Xanadu which stayed mostly on a theory level only, Englebart’s hypertext implementation was really used too.
http://susning.nu/H%E5kan_Lans
http://www.os2ezine.com/20001116/reflections.htm
Thanx
If you didn’t see these, they’re excellent:
http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html
Hmm, everytime something like this comes up, there is some nut that claims they have the patent.
Sorry, but the fact that Lans had a swedish patent in 1979 does not mitigate the fact that the original idea came out, and was dismissed, in 1968, 11 years earlier.
If anything, all Lans could have done is patented an improvement upon prior art, since the original patentholder would have been SRI, Englebart’s employer, which at the time was a pseudo-non-profit, from the looks of it.
Now, my guess is that SRI didn’t register the patent globally, which meant that if Lans holds the patent locally, it is because
1) It is aplicable only 2 Sweden, or
2) Sweden at the time did not require a serach for prior art, or
3) SRI didn’t patent the idea.
I’m willing to conceed the VGA display, since I haven’t looked at this, but to claim that Lans is the designer of the mouse is just plain silly. At best, he improved upon an existing idea, and patented that.
At worst, he tried to steal a patent that rightfully should have been attributed to Englebart and SRI.
i watched the videos and they are way before my time, i didnt realize that a mouse pointer is that old.
it’s really amazing to get a glace at the computer systems of the 70’s 80’s and see how muc things have advanced. Just wait till i am about 50 years old then i’ll be like “oh man we used to have to type on a keyboard and we had to wait for the computer to boot”
Thanks for the links.. (and yea, maybe I’ve read about H.Lans sometime before too…?=)
Another D.E. link, a nice biographic summary: http://www.bootstrap.org/chronicle/chronicle.html
& bibliography: http://www.bootstrap.org/institute/bibliography.html
is this the guy we can sue for Carpal Tunnel injuries???
From the link you provided: http://susning.nu/H%E5kan_Lans
Omnämns ofta felaktigt som uppfinnare till datormusen men det är korrekt att han uppfann digitiseringsbrädan i början av 1970-talet
This says that he’s often mistakenly credited as the inventor of the mouse, but that it’s correct that he invented the digitizing tablet I’m not sure, but don’t old digitizing tablets also come with something similar to pens/mice, perhaps that’s the reason behind the confusion. (mabye he did include something similar to a mouse, but probably not as a stand-alone device)
BTW: In Norway “mus” (mouse in Norwegian) has the same meaning as in English, but it’s also slang for a certain female part. This has caused an endless stream of bad jokes, like “So, you showed him your mouse?” etc. It’s really getting old, but people new to computers think this is really funny… whoever came up with that name has a lot to answer for 🙂
Didn’t Al Gore invent the mouse around the same time he invented the internet?
That joke is getting old and tired. Please give it a rest.
My first computer was a Macintosh Classic when I was 10. For Christmas, my father put the mouse in a shoebox with eyes and whiskers taped to it. Included in the box was a note that read “Hi. I’m a mouse. My name is Ben. The rest of my house is in the den.” I ran into the next room and saw that great little machine. Needless to say, the rest of my gifs waited a few hours.