The Bug, The Cat, and The Wooden Mouse: The Unexpected History of the Computer Mouse

Listeners, please note that this episode was recorded before the show’s name changed to Found in the Machine, so you’ll hear the old name in this episode. 

In 1968, a researcher named Douglas Engelbart took the stage in San Francisco and showed a thousand computer professionals something they had never seen: text editing, clickable links, and video conferencing, all controlled by a small wooden block with a wire trailing out the back.

But the mouse didn't begin with Engelbart. In this episode, we follow the tangled history of the world's most common computer peripheral and its origins as a Cold War secret. We'll also find out why your cursor is tilted 45 degrees.

In this episode

• The Mother of All Demos - the 1968 presentation that changed computing
• DATAR - a classified Cold War radar project, and an unlikely contribution to computing history
• The Rollkugel - a German parallel invention and a patent rejection
• Xerox PARC and Apple - how the mouse finally reached the world

Music

• Jay Opie / Nihilore, CC BY 4.0
  • "Brocken Spectre"
  • "Shape of a Gun" 
  • "Hedgehog's Dilemma"
  • "Eternal Light"

Additional Reading

The Mother of All Demos. (n.d.). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Computer History Museum. (n.d.). DATAR trackball (Object ID 500004669). CHM Revolution: Input & Output. https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14/350/1881

Bardini, T. (2000). Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, coevolution, and the origins of personal computing. Stanford University Press. https://archive.org/details/bootstrapping00thie

Hill-Khurana, J. (2020, May). A brief history of the mouse cursor, from Engelbart to PARC. https://jameshk.com/mouse-cursor

--

Support the show

💚

This show is independently produced. You can support the show by joining the show's Patreon. Patreon members get access to "Found in the Margins" bonus episodes and help make the show possible. You can also donate via Buy Me a Coffee.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don't forget to sign up to receive Notes from the Machine with each episode.