Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service. The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a post- World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called the Comprehensive Display System (CDS). Licklider's 'The Computer as a Communication Device' of 1968. The first recorded plural usage is 'mice' the online Oxford Dictionaries cites a 1984 use, and earlier uses include J. The plural for a computer mouse is either 'mice' or 'mouses' according to most dictionaries, with 'mice' being more common. The plural for the small rodent is always 'mice' in modern usage. The popularity of wireless mice without cords makes the resemblance less obvious.Īccording to Roger Bates, a hardware designer under English, the term also came about because the cursor on the screen was for some unknown reason referred to as 'CAT' and was seen by the team as if it would be chasing the new desktop device. The earliest known written use of the term mouse in reference to a computer pointing device is in Bill English's July 1965 publication, 'Computer-Aided Display Control', likely originating from its resemblance to the shape and size of a mouse, a rodent, with the cord resembling its tail. Mice often also feature other elements, such as touch surfaces and scroll wheels, which enable additional control and dimensional input.Ī computer mouse is named for its resemblance to the rodent. In addition to moving a cursor, computer mice have one or more buttons to allow operations such as the selection of a menu item on a display. Though originally all mice were connected to a computer by a cable, many modern mice are cordless, relying on short-range radio communication with the connected system. Most modern mice use optical sensors that have no moving parts.

Later, the standard design shifted to utilize a ball rolling on a surface to detect motion. Mice originally used two separate wheels to track movement across a surface: one in the X-dimension and one in the Y. The first public demonstration of a mouse controlling a computer system was in 1968. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer. A computer mouse (plural mice, also mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface.

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