The Mouse on Your Desk
The mouse is today almost as ubiquitous as the smart phone. Although Douglas Engelbart is credited with its invention, the mouse has ancestors that predate the prototype that was presented in Engelbart's December 9th 1968 Mother of All Demos. One cannot begin to discuss the origins of the mouse without talking about the trackball. The trackball was a pointing device that was invented in post-World War II-era Britain by Ralph Benjamin. It was invented to become a more useful replacement for the then joystick which was used to input coordinates for analog computers that would then calculate the future positions of target aircraft. All of this happened under the auspices of the British Royal Navy - one of dozens of examples of war being the driver of innovation in computing. The trackball was useful enough that Kenyon Taylor, Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff of the Royal Canadian Navy, invented their own trackball. Unlike Ralph Benjamin's trackball, this iteration was never patente...