an exciting journey to the prestigious Xerox PARC laboratory

If your mouse has ever stopped working, perhaps because its battery died, you probably remember how difficult it is to get anything done on your computer. only from keyboard. This peripheral is not only one of the best allies in productivity and gaming, but also an almost indispensable part of desktop computers.

The world has changed a lot since the first computer mouse was introduced in the 1960s. It was a wooden device with metal wheels and a single button on top. Currently, we have the opportunity to choose the accessory we like from a wide range of options, the price of which, generally speaking, ranges from 2 to 400 euros.

First commercial mouse

Have you ever wondered what the first commercial mouse was? We’ll have to go back to 1969 to find the answer. Then Xerox researched new business opportunities. The American company introduced nothing less than the first copier in history in 1959 and dominated that market, but it needed to continue to grow.

Xerox had a research center in Rochester, New York, but management gave the go-ahead for a second research center aimed at developing the “Office of the Future” concept. The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was literally on the other side of the United States, which in some ways gave his team a greater degree of freedom.

One of the laboratory’s most notable projects was called Xerox Alto. It was a personal computer that seemed to come from the future because it had a raster screen, an operating system with a graphical user interface (GUI), and Ethernet connectivity. Except, came with a mousean innovative accessory that evolved significantly before becoming available to the public a few years later.

The first Xerox mouse worked on wheels and had three buttons located one below the other, which was not entirely practical. The second concept got rid of the wheels, had two vertical buttons and a ball for greater accuracy. However, these options, in addition to being expensive, were sensitive to contamination, which compromised usability.

But Xerox engineers came up with a completely different alternative. They developed an optical mouse with no moving parts that solved the problems of previous concepts. This optical mouse was not like the current optical mice. I needed one special mat stamped mugs for work, but even taking this requirement into account, it cost much less than other proposals.

Xerox Alto did not become a commercial product. Charles Tucker, Xerox’s chief engineer, said the first computer cost the company $12,000, so the market price would have been about $40,000. This computer’s innovations laid the foundation for the Xerox Star, which in 1981 was offered with a keyboard and mouse for $16,500 ($56,000 today).

Thanks to the above movement, the mouse, which had been in the laboratory for so long, became a commercial product, although Xerox Star price was prohibitive, so this computer did not become a bestseller. Some time ago, in 1979 to be exact, Steve Jobs made a famous visit to Xerox PARC, where he had a near-perfect understanding of where personal computing was heading.

Images | Marcin Wichary | Michael Hicks | Bubba73 | Cool Caesar | Xerox PARC (Richard F. Lyon)

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